Thomas J. Armat (October 25, 1866 – September 30, 1948) was an American mechanic and

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

, a pioneer of

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking * ...

best known through the co-invention of the Edison

Vitascope Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins' patented Phantoscope, which cast images via film and electric light onto a wall or screen. The Vi ...

Biography

Armat studied at the Mechanics Institute in

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

and then in 1894 at the

Bliss Electrical School BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by William Wulf, W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and Nico Habermann, A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C (programming la ...

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, where he met

Charles Francis Jenkins Charles Francis Jenkins (August 22, 1867 – June 6, 1934) was an American engineer who was a pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies. His businesses incl ...

. The two classmates teamed up to develop a

movie projector A movie projector is an optics, opto-mechanics, mechanical device for displaying Film, motion picture film by projecting it onto a movie screen, screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices ...

using a new kind of intermittent motion mechanism, a "beater mechanism" similar to the one patented 1893 by

Georges Demenÿ Georges Demenÿ (12 June 1850 in Douai – 26 October 1917 in Paris) was a French inventor, chronophotographer, filmmaker, gymnast and physical fitness enthusiast. Main publications *''L’Éducation physique en Suède'', Paris, Société d'� ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. It was one of the first projectors using what is known as the

Latham loop The Latham Loop is used in film projection and image capture. It isolates the filmstrip from vibration and tension, allowing movies to be continuously shot and projected for extended periods. Invention of the Latham loop is usually credited to fil ...

(an extra loop of the film before the transport mechanism to reduce the tension on the film and avoid film breakage, developed independently at the same time by

Woodville Latham Major Woodville Latham (1837–1911) was an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and professor of chemistry at West Virginia University. He was significant in the development of early film technology. Woodville Lath ...

and his sons). They made their first public projection using their invention, named ''

Phantoscope The Phantoscope was a film projection machine, a creation of Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. In the early 1890, Jenkins began creating the projector. He later met Thomas Armat, who provided financial backing and assisted with necessary m ...

'' after an earlier model designed by Jenkins alone, in September 1895 at the

Cotton States and International Exposition The Cotton States and International Exposition was a world's fair held in Atlanta, Georgia, United States in 1895. The exposition was designed "to foster trade between southern states and South American nations as well as to show the products an ...

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

. Following this success, the two co-inventors broke up over

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

issues. Jenkins tried to claim sole inventorship, but was turned down and sold out to Armat, who subsequently joined and sold the patent to

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...

, who marketed the machine as the 'Vitascope'. The projector was used in a public screening in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

beginning April 23, 1896 and lasting more than a week. Working for Edison, Armat refined the projector in 1897 by replacing the beater mechanism with a more precise

Geneva drive The Geneva drive or Maltese cross is a gear mechanism that translates a continuous rotation movement into intermittent rotary motion. The ''rotating drive'' wheel is usually equipped with a pin that reaches into a slot located in the other wh ...

, duplicating an invention made a year earlier in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Oskar Messter Oskar Messter (21 November 1866 – 6 December 1943) was a German inventor and film tycoon in the early years of cinema. His firm Messter Film was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, into which it was ultimately merg ...

and Max Griewe and in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Robert William Paul Robert William Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was an English pioneer of film and scientific instrument maker. He made narrative films as early as April 1895. Those films were shown first in Edison Kinetoscope knockoffs. In 1896 he s ...

. In 1947, Armat and

William Nicholas Selig William Nicholas Selig (March 14, 1864 – July 15, 1948) was a pioneer of the American motion picture industry. In 1896 he created one of the first film production companies, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago. Selig produced a string of co ...

, Albert E. Smith and

George Kirke Spoor George Kirke Spoor (December 18, 1871 – 24 November 1953) was an early film pioneer who, with Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, founded Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907. He was a founding partner of V-L-S-E, Incorporated, a film distri ...

were awarded a Special

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

as representatives of the movie pioneers for their contributions to the film business. He died on September 30, 1948. In 2011, he was inducted, posthumously, into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also opera ...

.National Inventors Hall of Fame

References

External links

Film "Spanish Dance"
''(on

Google Video Google Video was a free video hosting service launched by the multinational technology company Google on January 25, 2005. Similar to YouTube, this platform allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on to other websites ...

)'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Armat, Thomas 1866 births 1948 deaths Academy Honorary Award recipients 19th-century American inventors Cinema pioneers People from Fredericksburg, Virginia Inventors from Virginia