Thomas Alva EDISON

American inventor and entrepreneur. Born 1847, died 1931. In addition to his three major inventions – the phonograph, the incandescent electric lamp, and the kinetoscope –power generation, communication, sound and motion picture recording. With the kinetoscope that he proposed in 1891 as one of the world’s first film projection machines, he laid the groundwork for the birth of cinema. The kinetoscope was first introduced in Japan in a public screening at the Shinko Club in Kobe in 1896.