The idea of adapting Edison's moving pictures to the magic lantern or stereopticon was so simple and straightforward that it undoubtedly occurred to hundreds, probably thousands, of people who peered into the kinetoscope. Fewer individuals, but still a surprisingly large number, tried to turn this idea into a reality. Projecting machines were invented independently and more or less simultaneously in four major industrialized countries: France, England, Germany, and the United States. While each inventor gave his machine a different name, their projectors all shared the same basic principles. In France, Auguste and Louis Lumiere developed the cinematographe at their Lyons factory, showed it privately in March 1895, and opened commercially in Paris at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines on 28 December 1895. Robert Paul, who was making films and kinetoscopes in England, realized his own idea for a...