mutoscope

thumb|An 1899 trade advertisement thumb|Mutoscope at Herne Bay Museum and Gallery|Herne Bay Museum thumb|Mutoscope in San Francisco antique arcade thumb|thumbtime=1.4|Mutoscope: "Mechanical Maniacs" video. The Mutoscope is an early motion picture device, invented by W. K. L. Dickson and Herman Casler and granted to Herman Casler on November 5, 1895. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, it does not project on a screen and provides viewing to only one person at a time. Cheaper and simpler than the Kinetoscope, the system, marketed by the American Mutoscope Company (later the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company), quickly dominated the coin-in-the-slot peep show business.

==Operation== The Mutoscope works on the same principle as the flip book. The individual image frames are conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards. The image on each card is made by contact printing each frame of the original 70 mm film. Rather than being bound into a booklet, the cards are attached to a circular core, similar to a huge Rolodex. A reel typically holds about 850 cards, giving a viewing time of about one minute. The reel with cards attached has a total diameter of about ; the individual cards have dimensions of about .