Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An early device for viewing motion pictures, consisting of a case inside which a loop of film passes in front of an electric light, producing moving images that can be viewed through an opening in the case.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A kind of movable panorama.
  • noun An instrument for illustrating the results of combinations of arcs of different radii in making curves. Also called kinescope.
  • noun An apparatus invented by Edison for exhibiting photographic pictures of objects in motion.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An instrument for producing curves by the combination of circular movements; -- called also kinescope.
  • noun An obsolete form of moving picture viewer, in which a film carrying successive instantaneous views of a moving scene travels uniformly through the field of a magnifying glass. The observer sees each picture, momentarily, through a slit in a revolving disk, and these glimpses, blended by persistence of vision, give the impression of continuous motion. It has been superseded by more recent versions of movie projector and electronic video viewers.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An early device for exhibiting motion pictures, creating the illusion of movement from a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images that is conveyed over a light source with a high-speed shutter.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a device invented by Edison that gave an impression of movement as an endless loop of film moved continuously over a light source with a rapid shutter; precursor of the modern motion picture

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Originally a trademark.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

kineto- + -scope

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word kinetoscope.

Examples

  • The party stayed to the very end of the show, though the kinetoscope was the last number but one on the programme, and fully half the audience left immediately afterward.

    McTeague 1920

  • But the picture producer holds to his eyes the seven-leagued demon spy-glass called the kinetoscope, as the audience will do later.

    The Art of the Moving Picture Vachel Lindsay 1905

  • The party stayed to the very end of the show, though the kinetoscope was the last number but one on the programme, and fully half the audience left immediately afterward.

    McTeague 1899

  • The party stayed to the very end of the show, though the kinetoscope was the last number but one on the programme, and fully half the audience left immediately afterward.

    McTeague Frank Norris 1886

  • It didn’t, but Fancy knew what Kit meant: that the kinetoscope was a cellar dweller like them, and out of its element among the bright beauty of the Woodsons’ flower garden.

    Slice Of Cherry Dia Reeves 2011

  • It didn’t, but Fancy knew what Kit meant: that the kinetoscope was a cellar dweller like them, and out of its element among the bright beauty of the Woodsons’ flower garden.

    Slice Of Cherry Dia Reeves 2011

  • It didn’t, but Fancy knew what Kit meant: that the kinetoscope was a cellar dweller like them, and out of its element among the bright beauty of the Woodsons’ flower garden.

    Slice Of Cherry Dia Reeves 2011

  • It didn’t, but Fancy knew what Kit meant: that the kinetoscope was a cellar dweller like them, and out of its element among the bright beauty of the Woodsons’ flower garden.

    Slice Of Cherry Dia Reeves 2011

  • It was to him, with his splendid power of vision, like gazing into a kinetoscope.

    Chapter 15 2010

  • Fancy noticed the kinetoscope on the floor and picked it up, petting it like a faithful dog.

    Slice Of Cherry Dia Reeves 2011

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The first true motion-picture viewing device, developed by 1891 by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, an employee of Thomas Edison, at Edison's sprawling laboratory complex in what is now West Orange, New Jersey. "Kineto-" means motion, and "-scope" means examine or view. Kinetoscopes allowed one viewer at a time to see a short (usually less than one minute) film. After Edison received his patents in 1893, he sold coin-operated Kinetoscopes and enterprising individuals bought them in groups and installed them in what came to be called "Kinetoscope parlors," the forerunners of today's movie theaters, where respectable women and children did not go. Within a few years, the novelty of one-minute films had worn off and the price dropped from 25 cents to 10, then to 5, and the devices/parlors became known as nickelodeons. Edison sold only about 900 of these devices. See also Kinetograph.

    In the meantime, Dickson had moved on and was making longer films... see Latham loop, Mutoscope, and Biograph.

    March 7, 2007