The proliferation of nickelodeon theaters created a huge demand for films and film equipment. Projector sales boomed for the chief hardware manufacturers: Edison (projecting kinetoscope), Lubin (cineograph), Selig (polyscope), Nicholas Power (cameragraph), the Enterprise Optical Company (optigraph), and Charles Dressler (American projectograph). Vitagraph meanwhile ceased manufacturing its projector and concentrated on film production, and the Urban bioscope, imported from England, no longer held an important share of the market. A number of small concerns also entered the field in 1906-1907, including the Viascope Manufacturing Company (viascope) and Eberhard Schneider with his Miror-Vitae projector. By mid 1906, Nicholas Power had forty employees and was turning out approximately two machines a day, or seven hundred a year. By September 1907, Lubin had eighty-six employees whose time was devoted solely to the manufacture of projectors.¹

The skyrocketing demand for these machines...