[Wikipedia] February 25: Kinetoscope

[Faraaz Damji]

  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


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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)


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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)


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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)