The Kinetoscope was a forerunner of the 
modern movie projector developed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson 
during his employment with Thomas Edison.

According to the history Edison's idea for the Kinetoscope was 
inspired by a visit with Eadweard Muybridge in 1888. Muybridge 
had earlier developed an invention he called the Zoopraxiscope. 
Muybridge's intention seem to be to secure financing and a 
commitment for further collaboration with Edison and on an 
elaboration of this design that included the incorporation of the 
Edisn phonograph -- a device that would play sound and images 
concurrently. Edison, impressed and inspired by Muybridge's 
ideas, quickly and autonomonously filed a patent that would 
"do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" and assigned 
the task of a new design to Laurie Dickson.

He decided to call "his" invention the Kinetoscope, combining the 
Greek root words "kineto" (movement), and "scopos" ("to view").

Edison, Dickson and the other employees of the Lab made progress on 
the design to a point. Their idea for spinning cylinders could only 
play very short animations, limited by the diameter of the cylinder. 
This stall in the project was reingivorated after Edison visited 
Etienne-Jules Marey, a French doctor and photographer who had 
developed a "chronophotographe" which used a strip of film which, 
of course, was much longer than the diameter of any useful cylinder.

John Carbutt's work on emulsion-coated celluloid film further 
progressed aims in this direction. William Heise incorporated this 
alongside Dickson at Edison's lab. Edison labs developed a new 
camera to use this film, the Kinetograph.

The film was designed as a loop, snaked around a series of spindles 
in a wooden box which was viewed by looking down into a window.

On May 20, 1891 the first public display of Thomas Alva Edison's 
prototype kinetoscope was shown at Edison's Laboratory for a 
convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.

The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held at the Brooklyn 
Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893.