William Kennedy Laurie Dickson 1860 - 1935

1879 moved to United States; in 1883 he was employed in the testing-room of the Edison Electric Light Co.; in 1884 was made Edison's photographer; 1888 became leading experimenter for the Kinetoscope; was co-patentee with Edison on the ore separation process; in 1892 Dickson created the standard film gauge known today as 35 mm film; 1891 to 1903 he produced more than 500 films; in 1893 he designed the first operational motion picture studio, Edison's ‘Black Maria’, and a laboratory to develop and copy the films shot; in 1895 he resigned from Edison's company and went on to form the KMCD syndicate to market the Mutoscope; in 1896 they established the American Mutoscope Company; in 1896 the biograph projector was premiered; Dickson travelled to Europe to make films and to establish a production-exhibition company; he used many stills from films as photographs to be sold to the press; in 1893 Dickson and Herman Casler designed the 'Photoret' detective camera; Dickson also wrote articles for magazines and journals; in later years he opened a laboratory in London and worked on projects, many related to entertainment.