Three of these machines were built in the Summer of 1895 and the first showing was held at the Cotton States Exposition at Atlanta, Georgia, in mid-September. There the chief picture competition was the inspiration—the Anschütz Electrical Tachyscope. There was also an extensive display of the Edison peep-show machines. Armat must have been glad to see the Edison activity because it was from that source that he was getting his film for the projector.
The projector at the Cotton States Exposition was not well received. The show finally burned up in a fire that swept the area. Fifteen hundred dollars was borrowed from Armat’s brothers to continue activities. Jenkins went home to Richmond, Indiana, for his brother’s wedding, taking one of the projectors with him.
Meanwhile, Armat hit upon a loop to ease the strain of projection. Jenkins gave a demonstration of the projector on October 29, 1895, and by November 22nd, Armat and Jenkins had disagreed. Jenkins tried to patent some modification on his own, without his partner, but found that he was in interference with the Armat-Jenkins projector patent and signed a concession of priority. From his invention Armat made a great profit which was obtained not without many law suits. Later Jenkins produced a non-intermittent projector of clever but impractical design. He also contributed some original ideas to television development but again the results were not very practical.
Certain other attempts were made to achieve projection of the magic shadows and complete the motion picture system at this time. Most of them also were stimulated by the exhibition of Anschütz’s Electrical Tachyscope. One of these was made by Rudolph Melville Hunter (1856–1935), a consulting engineer and inventor of considerable prominence in America. In 1883 Hunter had suggested a Dover-Calais tunnel, something that might have made the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940 much easier; the year before, 1882, he had suggested torpedo boats; later he devised smokeless powder for the French Government and sold some 300 patents to the General Electric and Westinghouse companies. He was also a consultant on acoustics. In his biography, last printed in the 1920–21 edition of Who’s Who (at which time he evidently retired), Hunter asserted that he “designed and built the first motion picture projector in the world in 1894.” His show, scheduled for Atlantic City, never opened. No details are known of his projector.
In the Summer of 1894, two gay young men, Grey and Otway Latham, drug company salesmen operating out of New York, became concessionaires for the Kinetoscope and formed the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company. That firm’s chief purpose was to photograph and exhibit prize-fight films. In September of 1894 the young Lathams decided that there never would be much to the peep-show motion picture business and determined to try to get life-size pictures on the screen. They called upon their father, Major Woodville Latham, for assistance.
Major Latham had had a distinguished career as an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. For a time he was professor of chemistry at the University of West Virginia.
In December, 1894, the Lathams formed the Lambda Company—the Greek “L” for Latham—and a start was made in their quest for a motion picture projector. Dickson was in on the deal although he was still working for Edison. Eugène Lauste, a somewhat secretive friend of Dickson, who was born in Paris in 1857 and had come to the United States in 1887, was the mechanic who worked in Latham’s shop. Lauste previously had been employed by Edison.
By the end of the Winter of 1894–95 the Latham project was showing signs of success. A demonstration was held on April 21, 1895, at 35 Frankford Street, New York City and on May 20, 1895, a public showing opened in a small store at 153 Broadway. The Latham projector was found to be inadequate and the following comments were made in the Photographic Times for September, 1895: “Even in this, the latest device, there is considerable room for improvement and many drawbacks have yet to be overcome.” Specific objections were made to the grain of the film, the fact that it was not entirely transparent, and other factors. It was noted that Major Latham was “persevering” in efforts to improve the device. But some word of encouragement was given: “Even in the present state the results obtained are most interesting and often startling. Quite a crowd of people visit the store at each performance, many making their exit wondering ‘How it’s done’.” It is worth noting that no illustration of the Latham machine was given but instead the Reynaud Optical Theatre of Paris was shown. Latham’s projector was called the Pantoptikon and later the Eidoloscope. Latham indignantly denied that parts of his device were borrowed from Edison’s machines. It is likely the Major was not aware of all that went on in his work shop.
Dickson eventually joined an organization called the KMCD syndicate, for E. B. Koopman of the Magic Introduction Company; Henry Norton Marvin, a former Edison Associate; Herman Casler, the actual inventor of a camera designed to evade Edison methods, and Dickson. The Casler camera or Mutograph, and the peep-show viewer or Mutoscope, sought to evade the Edison patents, so everything that Edison had they tried to avoid. The Mutoscope in its simplest form was really a step backwards to the old Thaumatrope principle of flashing successive card views before the eye. The Casler camera used unperforated wide gauge film with the pictures irregularly spaced. This made no difference, for the pictures were each mounted on cards.
The Mutoscope and the Mutograph stimulated interest and competition in films, and was the father of the concern around which opposition to Edison centered. The “independents” relied on the American Mutoscope Company, or Biograph as it became, to supply films which would be outside the restriction of the Edison patents. The ensuing patent war was long and bitter but did not materially interfere with the development of the motion picture.