About William Kennedy Dickson
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a British-American inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison. == Early life == William Kennedy Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France. His mother, Elizabeth Kennedy-Laurie (1823–1879) was American, born in Virginia. His father was James Waite Dickson, a Scottish artist, astronomer and linguist. James Dickson claimed direct lineage from the painter William Hogarth, and from Judge John Waite, the man who sentenced King Charles I to death. == Inventor and film innovator == At age 19 in 1879, William Dickson wrote a letter to American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison seeking employment. He was turned down. That same year Dickson, his mother, and two sisters moved from Britain to Virginia. In 1883 he was finally hired to work at Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. In 1888, Edison conceived of a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear".
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