Designed as an arcade machine, the Kinetoscope was a cabinet into which a person could look through a peephole and watch pictures move. An electric motor moved a filmstrip to an eyepiece, where a slotted disc exposed the images to the viewer at a rate of approximately 40 frames per second. About 50 feet of film revolved on spools to produce a 30-second film. Although Thomas Edison was involved in many pursuits, he had a strong interest in photography and in 1887 first began work on pictures that appeared to move. In 1889, a series of pictures could be photographed and moved rapidly using George Eastman's celluloid camera film. Mechanic and inventor William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (1860-1937), assigned by Edison to the photography project, invented both a camera ( Kinetograph) to make perforated filmstrips using celluloid roll film and a machine to view them--the Kinetoscope. Both machines were patented under Edison's name, and...