"...all of which must have been exceedingly burdensome to a man of limited means."
The Goodwin/Eastman patent fight was typical of the era.
Film historian Charles Musser called the emergence of cinema a:
"...history of greed, dishonesty, and ineptitude."
After a period where Dickson and his associates were diverted to work on other Edison projects, they returned to the Kinetograph. They still had problems with the thickness of the film stock. George Eastman wrote in his diary:
"The trouble with the film we have sent him is that the cogs tear the film slightly, as you will see by the enclosed, and gives blurred images."
Reichenbach tried to make the stock stronger and more photosensitive but was not successful. Without celluloid, it was near impossible for Dickson to continue work on a film camera.
"...the Kinetograph remained in status quo to my deep regret."
A few years earlier Thomas H. Blair had moved from Canada to the US and opened the Blair Tourograph & Dry Plate Company to sell his portable Tourograph camera:
“...for amateur photographers, college boys, and artists”
The package, with nine dry plates, cost $27.50 ($500 in today's terms). With continued success, Blair acquired a competitor Allen and Rowell Company and gained additional technology and skills. He used these to produce of a ‘film roll’ camera and celluloid film stock, based on stock bought from the Hyatts and an emulsion process tied to Goodwin’s patent.
Blair wanted to compete with George Eastman in the growing photography business, and as the only alternate reliable source of celluloid, he was able to connect with Laurie Dickson and provide rolls of film for the Kinetograph.
Like Blair, Birt Acres had shown great interest in photography and invention as a child. An Englishman born in the US but orphaned during the Civil War, Acres had studied art and science then returned to his native England where he experimented with photography and multi-lens cameras.
Acres gave lectures as a photographer, inventor, and innovator. His life soon intersected with Thomas Edison and filmmaking.
In April, Étienne-Jules Marey and assistant Georges Demenÿ had improved their chronophotograph camera used for recording human and animal movement. They debuted the Phonoscope to a small audience at the Académie des Sciences. Marey projected images, of a man speaking words and phrases, that were stored as thumbnails on a glass disk.
Demenÿ was then arguably inspired by the commercial potential of projection shows and wanted to use the Phonoscope to help the deaf learn to speak, with what he called Portraits Parlants or Speaking Portraits. The two men disagreed about future development and split.
Demenÿ set up his own laboratory and designed both a large format projector and a film transport mechanism that could claw filmstrips through a camera in an intermittent fashion or as it was called, 'dog movement'. He unsuccessfully approached the Lumiere brothers for celluloid supplies, and in turn, bought film from the European office of Thomas Blair.
Meanwhile, the man who had created the world’s first movie camera, and movies, disappeared without a trace in September 1890. Louis Aime Augustin le Prince sent his ‘Receiver’ and ‘Deliverer’ devices to New York in preparation for a public demonstration of his ''animated pictures''.
Le Prince spent a weekend with his brother Albert before getting on a train to Paris. The inventor of movie making never arrived. Despite investigations by detectives from three countries, Louis Aime Augustin le Prince, his documents and luggage were not found.
Author Patrick Samuel adds:
"Any hopes he had of being recognized as the true father of the motion picture were lost as he vanished before he was able to patent the new camera in Britain and demonstrate its operation in America."
le Prince’s death had an immediate impact.
By law, nobody could act on his patent for seven years unless le Prince returned or was proven to be deceased. French police were never able to find his body.
From 1890 until 1897, Le Prince's relatives could not legally commercialize his work.
Charles F. Jenkins of Richmond, Indiana was a key player in the invention of moving pictures and he even lived long enough to work on television transmission. As a rural Quaker youth, he invented a bean husker that removed the seed of the bean from the outer shell. Then designed a jack that raised wagons so that grease might be more easily applied.
After graduation, he worked the sawmills of Washington State and then landed a job with the U.S. Life Saving Service, today the U.S. Coast Guard. He used his spare time to design a moving pictures projector and after year of experimentation, he had a working device that screened images. Images that were too small to be viewed by a large audience.
Donald G. Godfrey observed in 'C. Francis Jenkins, Pioneer of Film and Television':
"It was challenging for lone inventors to make a living, fund their work, and promote acceptance of a new device, and Jenkins had to meet each of these challenges."
Around this time, May 1891, Mina Edison demonstrated a Kinetoscope unit to the National Federation of Women’s Clubs at her husband Thomas' laboratories. The New York Sun reported:
"In the top of the box was a hole perhaps an inch in diameter. As they looked through the hole they saw the picture of a man. It was a most marvelous picture."
Edison filed patents, began preparations to make film titles for viewing and set the Chicago World Expo 1893 as the debut date.
Meanwhile, Laurie Dickson was still negotiating with local companies to make lenses for the camera and liaising with George Eastman to perfect the celluloid stock. He trimmed the next batch of film from 40 mm (1 9/16 inch) to 34.925 mm (1 3/8 inch) and accidentally created the 35 mm industry standard.
Andre Gaudreault notes in American Cinema:
"A revised version of the camera, called the Kinetograph, was completed in 1892, using film in the modern 35 mm format, a frame one inch wide and three-quarters of an inch high with four perforations on either side to advance the film by engaging sprockets on a wheel."
Dickson filmed everything from circus bears to a staged sneeze by the chief mechanic, Fred Ott. Dickson also created an 'ecosystem of equipment' that included contact printers, developing tanks, drying racks and then constructed a purpose-built outdoor studio, The Black Maria - that rotated on wheels so that it could allow sun in at all times. In the coming fifteen year period, Edison Studios made more than 1200 film titles.
In Germany, two brothers had spent the previous three years traveling a magic lantern show with their father. In the summer of 1892, Max and Emil Skladanowsky built their own chronophotographic camera that used unperforated film in a worm-gear intermittent movement. Max shot forty-eight frames of Emil in August 1892.
As the Germans experimented, it seemed unlikely that the two great American inventors of the era would become further involved in motion pictures. The film pioneer George Eastman believed that his key employees were colluding with a competitor and on New Year's Day 1892 he wrote identical, brief letters to head chemist Henry Reichenbach, his brother Homer, Carl Passavant and Gus Milburn:
"Your services are no longer required by this company".
Eastman stopped film production while he searched for a replacement for Reichenbach. No film stock was available to Edison Labs or anyone else.
At the same time inventor Thomas Edison