Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope first became commercially available in 1894.
The Kinetoscope was an early motion-picture viewing machine designed for one person at a time. A viewer looked through a peephole in the cabinet and watched a rapidly moving strip of film illuminated inside. It was not a projector for showing films to a large audience.
Edison’s laboratory developed the system with important contributions from William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and other workers. The first Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York City in April 1894, and similar venues soon appeared elsewhere.
The machine helped establish motion pictures as a commercial entertainment business, but its individual viewing format differed from the later cinema experience. The Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe, introduced in 1895, projected moving images for groups and helped popularize theatrical film screenings.