Mutoscope
Contents
Technology
Moving pictures vs Moving Images
The late 19th century saw an explosion of apparatus attempting to recreate the movement of real life, an explosion that contemporaries were conscious of. A conscientious New York Times reporter provides a list of 50 --graphs and --scopes, including "Vitascope and biograph are most familiar here, with cinematograph coming next at a considerable distance...Electroscope exists, and so do ...zinematograph, vitropticon, stinnetiscope, vivrescope, diaramiscope, corminograph, kineoptopscope, craboscope, vitaletiscope, cinematoscope, mutoscope, cinoscope, kinetograph, lobsterscope" (New York Times). This 1898 writer asserts, "The arrangements for manipulation of the light, the band, and the lens are numerous, but they vary only in inconsequential details, and for all practical purposes the machines are identical."
At least one apparatus on this extensive list contradicts that claim to sameness. The mutoscope shares light and lens with its scopular and graphical cousins, but lacks the "band of minute photographs." On this difference, the very functioning of the mutoscope is built.
Hand Crank vs Electric Motor
Circularity vs Linearity
Spectatorship
Arcades: Viewing Alone, Together
“Early cinema audiences were often an unruly bunch, drawn to nickelodeons and Kinetoscope parlors through the lure of sensation alone. “(Dixon & Foster 11)
Scopic Pleasure: Erotic Viewing
References
Adair, Gilbert. Flickers : An Illustrated Celebration of 100 Years of Cinema. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995. Print.
Brown, Richard. A Victorian Film Enterprise : The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1897-1915.Print.
Casler, Herman. Mutoscope. Patent 683,910. 8 Oct 1901. Web. 27 Mar 2010.
Dixon, Wheeler W. and Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. A Short History of Film. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Print.
Gunning, Tom. "Machines That Give Birth to Images: Douglas Crockwell." Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde 1919-1945. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Print.
Herbert, Stephen. A History of Early Film Volume 1. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
The Illustrated History of the Cinema. Ed. Lloyd, Ann and Robinson, David. Orbis Book Publishing Corporation Ltd. and Macmillan Publishing Company., 1986. Print.
Kardish, Laurence. Real Plastic Magic: A History of Films and Filmmaking in America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972. Print.
Keim, Norman O. with Marc, David. Our Movie Houses: A History of Film & Cinematic Innovation in Central New York. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Print.