Mutoscope
Mutoscopio
- Date
- 1894 · confidence high
- Place
- New York, United States
- Credited to
- William Kennedy Dickson and Herman Casler
- Field
- Communication
What it is
A mechanical motion-picture viewer that flips photographic cards mounted on a rotating drum, viewed by one person at a time through a peephole. Cheaper and simpler than Edison's Kinetoscope, it dominated the coin-operated peep-show business.
Patented by Herman Casler on 5 November 1895; marketed by the American Mutoscope Company, founded by former Edison associates.
What it led to
- the coin-in-the-slot peep-show business
- popularisation of individual motion-picture viewing before theatrical cinema
- later collecting of mutoscope reels as a precursor of the flip-book