<P> Dickson and his then lead assistant, Charles Brown, made halting progress at first . Edison's original idea involved recording pinpoint photographs, 1 / 32 of an inch wide, directly on to a cylinder (also referred to as a "drum"); the cylinder, made of an opaque material for positive images or of glass for negatives, was coated in collodion to provide a photographic base . An audio cylinder would provide synchronized sound, while the rotating images, hardly operatic in scale, were viewed through a microscope - like tube . When tests were made with images expanded to a mere 1 / 8 of an inch in width, the coarseness of the silver bromide emulsion used on the cylinder became unacceptably apparent . Around June 1889, the lab began working with sensitized celluloid sheets, supplied by John Carbutt, that could be wrapped around the cylinder, providing a far superior base for the recording of photographs . The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the United States, may have been shot at this time (there is an unresolved debate over whether it was made in June 1889 or November 1890); known as Monkeyshines, No. 1, it shows an employee of the lab in an apparently tongue - in - cheek display of physical dexterity . Attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc - based exhibition designs . </P> <P> The project would soon head off in more productive directions, largely impelled by a trip of Edison's to Europe and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for which he departed August 2 or 3, 1889 . During his two months abroad, Edison visited with scientist - photographer Étienne - Jules Marey, who had devised a "chronophotographic gun"--the first portable motion picture camera--which used a strip of flexible film designed to capture sequential images at twelve frames per second . Upon his return to the United States, Edison filed another patent caveat, on November 2, which described a Kinetoscope based not just on a flexible filmstrip, but one in which the film was perforated to allow for its engagement by sprockets, making its mechanical conveyance much more smooth and reliable . The first motion picture system to employ a perforated image band was apparently the Théâtre Optique, patented by French inventor Charles - Émile Reynaud in 1888 . Reynaud's system did not use photographic film, but images painted on gelatine frames . At the Exposition Universelle, Edison would have seen both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz . This disc - based projection device is often referred to as an important conceptual source for the development of the Kinetoscope . Its crucial innovation was to take advantage of the persistence of vision theory by using an intermittent light source to momentarily "freeze" the projection of each image; the goal was to facilitate the viewer's retention of many minutely different stages of a photographed activity, thus producing a highly effective illusion of constant motion . By late 1890, intermittent visibility would be integral to the Kinetoscope's design . </P> <P> The question of when the Edison lab began working on a filmstrip device is a matter of historical debate . According to Dickson, in the summer of 1889, he began cutting the stiff celluloid sheets supplied by Carbutt into strips for use in such a prototype machine; in August, by his description, he attended a demonstration of George Eastman's new flexible film and was given a roll by an Eastman representative, which was immediately applied to experiments with the prototype . As described by historian Marta Braun, Eastman's product </P> <P> was sufficiently strong, thin, and pliable to permit the intermittent movement of the film strip behind (a camera) lens at considerable speed and under great tension without tearing...stimulat (ing) the almost immediate solution of the essential problems of cinematic invention . </P>

Edison film company the kinetoscope and early films