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Biography of William Dixon

William Dixon was a Scottish inventor who, under the guidance of Thomas Edison, created one of the first movie cameras. Born in Brittany, France, Dixon came from a family of Scottish artist, astronomer, and linguist James Waite Dickson and his wife Elizabeth Kennedy-Laurie. His father claimed to be a direct descendant of the renowned artist William Hogarth and John Waite, the judge who sentenced Charles I to death.

Dixon moved to Virginia with his mother and two sisters in 1879. In 1888, Thomas Edison began developing a device that would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." In October, Edison filed a preliminary application describing his plans for the device, which eventually became known as the kinetoscope, and in March 1889, a new application was submitted. Around the same time, Dixon, who was working as a staff photographer in Edison's company, was given the unexpected task of bringing Edison's vision to life.

Dixon and his team worked on the kinetoscope for several years. The first working version was presented in May 1891, and the development was completed in the fall of 1892. The official demonstration of the kinetoscope took place at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. Although the mechanisms for displaying films have changed significantly over time, the basic principles established by Dixon remained largely untouched. The kinetoscope allowed a single viewer to watch pre-recorded films by rapidly pulling perforated film in front of a light source. This illusion of motion was used in film projectors for many years to come.

In addition to the kinetoscope, Dixon and his team also developed the kinetograph, one of the first devices for recording films. Using one of their own cameras, Dixon filmed a movie for the Pope himself, and shortly after, his camera was blessed by Pope Leo XIII. In 1894-1895, Dixon became a consultant for the Latham Brothers, one of the largest kinetoscope companies. Alongside Eugene Lauste, another former Edison employee, Dixon developed a device called the "Latham loop" in April 1895. This invention allowed for the use of much longer film strips than previously thought possible.

Meanwhile, another team of ex-Edison employees introduced the world to the projection system known as the "eidoloscope," which was used for the first commercial film screening on May 20, 1895. Dixon, along with the Latham Brothers, also worked for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which produced mutoscopes, another type of device for displaying moving pictures. However, mutoscopes were quite different from traditional film projectors as they consisted of rotating drums covered with corresponding illustrations.

Dixon's involvement with mutoscopes was short-lived, and he returned to the United Kingdom in 1897. William Dixon passed away on September 28, 1935, at the age of 75.