French-born Englishman William K. L. Dickson {1860-1935} emigrated to the U.S. in 1879. Dickson soon began to work alongside American inventor Thomas Edison. Dickson and Edison together created the kinetoscope, a forerunner of the motion picture film projector. Patented in 1897, the kinetoscope produced short, lifelike moving pictures by passing a strip of film quickly between a lens and an electric light source. Dickson is credited with filming as well as directing many of the earliest "shorts," most of them a minute or less.