Kinetographs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A device used for recording motion picture images, capturing sequences of movements in a visual format
2. a historical apparatus that enables the analysis of motion through photographic means
3. a mechanical invention that documents and reproduces the visual dynamics of moving subjects

Etymology: Kinetograph is a compound built from the Greek "kinein", "to move", and "-graphos", "writing" or "recording", so the name literally means something like "motion-writer." Thomas Edison's laboratory coined the term in the 1890s for the camera that recorded moving pictures on strips of film, which set it apart from the separate viewing device, the kinetoscope, that people peered into. Edison's assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson is generally credited with much of the camera's design, and the name signalled that the apparatus was meant to write motion onto film. The plural "kinetographs" simply refers to several of these cameras, or to several recordings made by them. Because the word was a technical coinage tied to one period of early cinema, it is now mostly found in histories of film rather than in everyday use.