Like the telephone which was, in its early days, looked upon as an interesting scientific toy not destined to play an important part in the daily lives of the people at large, Edison’s kinetoscope was not taken seriously by the crowds who found it but one of many novel features combining to make the Chicago World Fair of 1893 a success. They flocked to see it, marvelled at its ingenuity, but failed, as did Edison himself, to realize that the world had been enriched by not merely a new plaything but by a novel medium for influencing the destinies of the race, the ultimate stupendous significance of which we, even thirty years later, can only vaguely estimate. It is amazing but true that, so little did Edison appreciate the fact that he had invented not an ephemeral toy but the only universal language yet vouchsafed to the race, he neglected to obtain patents for his kinetoscope outside of the United States. His oversight in this connection had far-reaching results, the most important of which historically gave to England instead of the United States the honor of throwing upon a screen the first “movie,” as that word is understood to-day. That a Yankee notion should fail to realize its own possibilities and be forced eventually to thank an Englishman for placing it upon the heights from which it was to win world-dominion is not an agreeable reflection to the ultra-patriotic American, but our story of the evolution of the movie must now take us across the Atlantic and introduce to us Mr. Robert W. Paul, electrical engineer and manufacturer of scientific apparatus, whose workshops were located in Hatton Garden, London. Reversing the process of the “star of empire” it was Eastward that the movie, in its search for development, had taken its way. Cradled in California, it had learned to walk in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and Rochester, New York, and was now to realize its youthful possibilities in the British metropolis. Two peripatetic Athenians, one of them a toy-maker, had seen, admired and coveted the Edison kinetoscope at the Chicago World’s Fair. They had the European market in mind for the new plaything and acted at once without looking into the question of patents. To Paul, at Hatton Garden, London, came the Athenians with a kinetoscope they had obtained in the United States, urging him to manufacture duplicates with which they might supply the English, and possibly the Continental, market. Paul, however, had read his Virgil and heeded the old poet’s warning against Greeks bearing gifts. Supposing, of course, that Edison had protected his invention by English patents, Paul rejected the proposition of the Greeks. Later, however, he discovered that, so far as the English Patent Office was concerned, he was free to manufacture kinetoscopes for the European market and presently went at it with a will and with considerable success.