Soon after the Lumières' first demonstration to a French private society, and before their first public show, the brothers Otway and Gray Latham in the USA gave shows to the New York paying public on their Eidoloscope (or Panoptikon) projector, from May 1895. The lack of an intermittent mechanism on their machine meant that the projected pictures were small, but the first film they showed, a boxing match: Young Griffo versus Battling Charles Barnett, was eight minutes long - considerably longer than other films would be for years. It was produced with their own camera. (They were unable to use kinetoscope films, as the images were too small to projected satisfactorily on their primitive projector). In late September and early October 1895, C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat projected Kinetoscope films at the Cotton States Exposition, Georgia USA, using their Phantascope projector. They later split acrimoniously: Jenkins continued to promote his version of the phantascope, and Armat eventually sold his to Edison.
|