William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a French-Anglo-Scottish inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employ of Thomas Edison (post-dating the work of Louis Le Prince).
Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France, to a mother of Scottish descent and an English father. His father, James Waite Dickson, was an artist, astronomer and linguist, claiming direct linea...
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William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a French-Anglo-Scottish inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employ of Thomas Edison (post-dating the work of Louis Le Prince).
Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France, to a mother of Scottish descent and an English father. His father, James Waite Dickson, was an artist, astronomer and linguist, claiming direct lineage from the painter Hogarth, and from Judge John Waite, the man who sentenced King Charles I to death. A gifted musician, his mother, Elizabeth Kennedy-Laurie Dickson, was related to the Lauries of Maxwellton (immortalised in the ballad Annie Laurie) and connected with the Duke of Athol and the Royal Stuarts.
In 1888, American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Alva Edison conceived of a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear". In October, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent...
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