The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. In April 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history was given in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture, the Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison's decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1570: Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I and her followers in the Church of England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnans_in_Excelsis)

1836: American inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt received a patent for a "revolving gun", later known as a revolver. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revolver)

1956: In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences to the 20th Party Congress, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Personality_Cult_and_its_Consequences)

1986: Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as the first female President of the Philippines after Ferdinand Marcos fled the nation after twenty years of rule because of the People Power Revolution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corazon_Aquino)

1992: Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed over 600 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojali in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_Massacre)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

plenipotentiary: A person invested with full power, especially as the agent or ambassador of a sovereign. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plenipotentiary)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense. -- John Leonard (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Leonard)