On November 28,

Herman Casler was a pioneering American inventor and motion-picture engineer best known for co-founding the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company and for creating several foundational early-cinema technologies. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Casler first gained prominence in the 1890s when he developed the Mutoscope, a hand-cranked “flip-card” motion-picture viewer that displayed moving images by rapidly flipping a sequence of photographs mounted on a circular drum. [U.S. Patent No. 549,309, issued November 5, 1895, and (U.S. Patent No. 683,910, granted October 8, 1901)]. Cheaper and more durable than Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, the Mutoscope became wildly popular in amusement parlors and helped establish Biograph as one of the most influential early film companies.

Casler’s inventive contributions extended well beyond the viewer itself. He designed the Mutograph camera, a large and robust motion-picture camera that used wide, high-quality film, giving Biograph productions their famously sharp images. He also developed improvements to film perforation, camera mechanics, and projection systems that shaped the technical standards of early cinema.