With Edison's kinetoscope the moving pictures had become a means for popular amusement and entertainment, and the appetite of commercialism was whetted.

At once efforts to improve on the Edison machine were starting everywhere, and the adjustment to the needs of the wide public was in the foreground.
Crowning success came almost at the same time to Lumiere and Son in Paris and to Paul in London.

They recognized clearly that the new scheme could not become really profitable on a large scale as long as only one person at a time could see the pictures.

Both the well-known French manufacturers of photographic supplies and the English engineer considered the next step necessary to be the projection of the films upon a large screen.

Yet this involved another fundamental change.