Hence the eye saw not the
passing of the pictures but one picture after another at the same spot.
Pretty little scenes could now be acted in half a minute's time, as more
than six hundred pictures could be used. The first instrument was built
in 1890, and soon after the Chicago World's Fair it was used for
entertainment all over the world. The wheel of Anschuetz had been
widespread too; yet it was considered only as a half-scientific
apparatus. With Edison's kinetoscope the moving pictures had become a
means for popular amusement and entertainment, and the appetite of
commercialism was whetted. At once efforts to improve on the Edison
machine were starting everywhere, and the adjustment to the needs of the
wide public was in the foreground.
Crowning success came almost at the same time to Lumiere and Son in
Paris and to Paul in London. They recognized clearly that the new scheme
could not become really profitable on a large scale as long as only one
person at a time could see the pictures. Both the well-known French
manufacturers of photographic supplies and the English engineer
considered the next step necessary to be the projection of the films
upon a large screen. Yet this involved another fundamental change. In
the kinetoscope the films passed by continuously. The time of the
exposure through the opening in the revolving shutter had to be
extremely short in order to give distinct pictures.
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