The Vitascope was an early film-projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. The pair publicly demonstrated an image projection device at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia which they called the “Phantoscope.” This prototype of modern film-projectors cast images onto a wall or screen for a moderately large audience. The inventors, heady with the scent of success, became at odds with one another and began fighting over credit for the invention.
Thomas Armat independently sold the Phantoscope to The Kinetoscope Company. The company realised that their Kinetoscope would soon be a thing of the past with the rapidly advancing proliferation of early cinematic engineering. They were very interested in this newest magic lantern and approached Thomas Edison to finance the manufacture of the instrument.
Edison agreed to the deal on one condition: he would henceforth be credited with the invention of the machine that he renamed the “Vitascope”.
The Vitascope’s first theatrical exhibition was on April 23, 1896, at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York City. Other competitors soon displayed their own projection systems in American theaters, including the re-engineered Eidoloscope, which copied Vitascope innovations; the Lumière Cinématographe, which had already debuted in Europe in 1895; Birt Acres’ Kineopticon; and the Biograph which was marketed by the American Mutoscope Company.
The Edison Company developed its own projector known as the Projectoscope or Projecting Kinetoscope in November 1896, and abandoned marketing the Vitascope.
I have an Original Edison “Electromotiscope” poster that I am researching. Any information that anyone has will be appreciated. Thank you, John Cook