The Kinephone (Gramophone-Cinema) – Optical Toy, Reid & Co. Secunderabad, British India, c. 1920
CHF 480.00
Rare English pre-cinema parlour novelty for the gramophone turntable, retailed in British India by Reid & Co. of Secunderabad (Deccan). The same Reid & Co.-marked variant is held by the Science Museum, London, and the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Exeter.
A scarce English optical toy of the early 1920s, The Kinephone (also called "Gramophone-Cinema") is a flat zoetrope designed to be placed on top of a 78 rpm gramophone turntable. As the turntable rotates, three small carriage wheels run on a printed picture disc while the viewer looks through the radial slots of a stationary white disc above. The intermittent obscuration of the slots produces the illusion of moving figures – an ingenious domestic application of the persistence-of-vision principle that animated pre-cinema toys from the phenakistoscope to the zoetrope.
This example bears the original red dealer's label of Reid & Co., Piano & Music Saloons, Secunderabad (Deccan) to the lid of the original cardboard box, and the matching violet rubber stamp of the same firm to the verso of the picture disc(s). Reid & Co. were a British-Indian retailer of pianos, gramophones and musical novelties based in the British military cantonment of Secunderabad – twin city to Hyderabad – which was home to a substantial European population during the late Raj. The Kinephone was manufactured in England and exported to India for the colonial market; this piece has since travelled back to Europe, giving it an unusually rich trade and provenance history.
The Reid & Co.-marked Secunderabad variant is the same version recorded in the collection of the Science Museum, London, and in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, University of Exeter – the two principal British public collections of pre-cinema apparatus.
Includes:
Original cardboard box with red Reid & Co. retailer's label and printed instruction label ("GRAMOPHONE – CINEMA / The Kinephone")
White slotted viewing disc
Central wooden block with three carriage wheels
1 picture disc(s), Reid & Co. retailer's stamp to verso
A scarce English optical toy of the early 1920s, The Kinephone (also called "Gramophone-Cinema") is a flat zoetrope designed to be placed on top of a 78 rpm gramophone turntable. As the turntable rotates, three small carriage wheels run on a printed picture disc while the viewer looks through the radial slots of a stationary white disc above. The intermittent obscuration of the slots produces the illusion of moving figures – an ingenious domestic application of the persistence-of-vision principle that animated pre-cinema toys from the phenakistoscope to the zoetrope.
This example bears the original red dealer's label of Reid & Co., Piano & Music Saloons, Secunderabad (Deccan) to the lid of the original cardboard box, and the matching violet rubber stamp of the same firm to the verso of the picture disc(s). Reid & Co. were a British-Indian retailer of pianos, gramophones and musical novelties based in the British military cantonment of Secunderabad – twin city to Hyderabad – which was home to a substantial European population during the late Raj. The Kinephone was manufactured in England and exported to India for the colonial market; this piece has since travelled back to Europe, giving it an unusually rich trade and provenance history.
The Reid & Co.-marked Secunderabad variant is the same version recorded in the collection of the Science Museum, London, and in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, University of Exeter – the two principal British public collections of pre-cinema apparatus.
Includes:
Original cardboard box with red Reid & Co. retailer's label and printed instruction label ("GRAMOPHONE – CINEMA / The Kinephone")
White slotted viewing disc
Central wooden block with three carriage wheels
1 picture disc(s), Reid & Co. retailer's stamp to verso
Condition notes
Honest, complete period example with light age toning to box and discs, minor handling wear consistent with age. Mechanism functional. Detailed condition photographs available on request.
kinephone
gramophone cinema
zoetrope
phenakistoscope
optical toy
pre-cinema
animation
persistence of vision