Kinora

Bond’s Limited
138 New Bond Street
London, England
ca. 1910

While the Kinora is almost forgotten today, it used to be a relatively popular technology for home entertainment in the early 20th century. The Kinora system was originally invented by Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1896, a year after they released the Cinematographe. Instead of projecting moving images on a screen, like the cinematography and later home cinema systems, the Kinora was designed as an individual viewing machine similar to the Mutoscope. It made use of a flip book mechanism to animate hundreds of paper-based photographs that were attached to a reel. By placing the reel on the Kinora viewer and turning the crank, the photographs were put in motion and could be watched while looking through the lens. This fully original Kinora viewer has a beautifully embossed metal hood and a stunning inlaid design on its wooden base.