13.8

//Source(s): "The Kinora = motion pictures in the home 1896- 1914" by Barry Anthony (The Projection Box, 1996). This// inexpensive booklet contains a listing of some 300 kinora reels (60 frame enlargements), illustrations of the various viewers, and a history of the Kinora system. E-mail s-herbert@easynet.co.uk for details of how to obtain a copy. The Kinora was a miniature mutoscope ("flip-book" principle viewer) intended for home use. While the Lumiere brothers were working flat out developing their Cinematographe camera/projector in 1895, they were also developing the Kinora. They had no way of knowing that they were "inventing" cinema (a bunch of people in a dark hall watching films projected on a screen), only that they were creating a moving picture machine. This technology could have taken off in a number of directions in terms of exhibition: (in arcades, or in the home). So the Lumiere brothers 'hedged their bets' with the Kinora home mutoscope viewing machine, patented in Feb 1896. The Kinora was a development of an idea already patented by Casler (of American Mutoscope & Biograph fame) in America. As it happened, their 'cinema' projections were very successful, and they didn't bother with the Kinora. A few years later they passed on the idea to Gaumont, who marketed it in France around 1900, with approximately 100 reels available (subjects by Lumiere and others). Around 1902, versions of the viewer were launched in Britain and it eventually became successful; over a dozen different models of the viewer were made, and something like 600 different reels were available. The apparatus was cheap, easy to use, and non-flammable. A studio was set up to take private motion portraits in London, and eventually home movie cameras (using unperforated paper negatives) were sold. The Kinora allowed the middle classes to see motion pictures at home, before it was socially acceptable to visit the cinema. In 1914, the factory burnt down and the system died. The number of surviving machines and reels indicate the popularity of the Kinora in Europe for around 15 years before World War One, and yet there is no public consciousness of this medium at all. Viewing a reel in one of these machines is extraordinary = the mechanism is so simple it is almost non-existent, and yet the result is the same as watching an ordinary movie or miniature TV. Stephen Herbert (s-herbert@easynet.co.uk)
 * Dead medium: the Kinora**
 * From: s-herbert@easynet.co.uk (Stephen Herbert)**