Thomas Armat is the inventor of the Edison Vitascope, one of the first screen projectors. The Virginia-born Armat made his early living as a real estate agent and free-lance inventor. He is responsible for designing a new kind of oarlock for boats, an automatic car coupler for railroad cars and a number of other industrial machines. He and Charles Francis Jerkins began designing the first projection machine ever in 1894. Unfortunately, it was a bust. Still Armat kept tinkering and the following year had developed the device that was to become the Edison Vitascope. It differed from the earlier prototype in that it utilized a looping device and had an internal motion mechanism. He first called his revolutionary invention a Phantoscope and exhibited at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta. The next year Armat contracted with Edison to have his invention manufactured. Following the machine's debut on April 23, 1896, Lumitre debuted his similar Cinematographe in Paris. Armat was the projectionist who demonstrated it. Later Armat sued Edison and Biograph for breaching his patent rights, but in the end, they teamed up and formed the Motion Pictures Patent Company.
by Sandra Brennan
biography
