Charles Pathé, a great name in the early French film world and carried on by several companies in the United States and elsewhere, bought one of the first Paul motion picture projectors. Previously he had roadshowed the Edison phonograph.
Acres had a projector of his own called the Kinetic Lantern, which he said was finished in January, 1896, but the title was changed to Kineopticon and later to Cinematoscope for a special program for the Prince of Wales. Probably this projector also was made by Paul or he assisted in its design. Acres, however, was primarily interested in his profession of photography, and motion pictures appeared to him to be only one aspect of the subject. In 1897 he said: “There is something in photography and, in particular, in animated photography. Indeed, I think there can be no doubt that animated photography is destined to revolutionize our art-science, both as regards matters historical and scientific, in addition to giving us life-long portraits.”
By the time Acres thus spoke the revolution was well under way.
As in France, a number of men immediately started making cameras and projectors in England. The patent rights were confused, chiefly because Edison neglected to secure foreign coverage, leaving the field wide open.
In the United States two factors dominated the experimentation: (1) the Anschütz Electrical Tachyscope, shown at the Chicago Fair in 1893 and (2) the Edison peep-show film device on display in many places, starting in New York in the Spring of 1894.
The projection of life-size motion pictures on a screen before an audience might have been achieved considerably earlier had Edison not felt that there would be no commercial market for such a device. The little peep-show models could be manufactured at rather low cost and sold at a profit, so no impetus was given to the development of a screen projector which might, he thought, quickly dissipate the public’s interest and destroy the market. But, it may be recalled, the screen projector, combined with the talking phonograph, had been Edison’s original goal when he started the experiments in 1887.
One of the men who was impressed by Anschütz’s Electrical Tachyscope at the Chicago Fair was a young Virginian, Thomas Armat. He was a man of means and though associated in a real estate office in Washington, D. C., still had time to follow his scientific interests which induced him to attend the Bliss School of Electricity in Washington. At this time, Armat had already invented a conduit for an electric railway and had refused an offer to interest himself in the distribution of the Edison peep-show film Kinetoscope. He wanted screen projection.
At the Bliss School Armat was introduced to C. Francis Jenkins, a young Government clerk, who also was interested in scientific matters. He had studied the Edison Kinetoscope and, for the Pure Food Show in Convention Hall, in November of 1894, had shown a model which instead of Edison’s revolving shutter had revolving electric lights, based on the Uchatius idea. In March of 1894 Jenkins received a patent on a motion picture camera which used a revolving lens system called the Phantoscope. There is no evidence that Jenkins ever made that camera operate efficiently. It was described in the Photographic Times of July, 1894, as being only five by five by eight inches in size and weighing ten pounds. Pictures of an athlete in action, said to have been taken with Jenkins’ device were reproduced.
Jenkins was having difficulty achieving projection. Armat and he decided to form a partnership. Armat was to build a projector after Jenkins’ design and, in return, he would receive rights to the rotating lens camera patent. The results were a failure. Armat decided to continue with his own ideas and there was no objection, as he was supplying the money and the place for the work in the basement of his real estate office at 1313 “F” Street, in Washington.
Armat decided that the Jenkins idea of continuous movement with revolving lights was unworkable and chose an intermittent action. A variation of the Maltese-cross gear system was tried. The eventual legal dispute between Armat and Jenkins has obscured data on the system first used. It is certain the results were not wholly successful.