Waukegan In the Early Movie Industry-- Part 2: Of Phonographs and Early Films

This is from the November 16, 2019, presentation for the Fox Lake/Grant Township Historical Society at the museum on Washington Street in Ingleside, Illinois.

This is taken from my notes and Wikipedia.  When they turned off the lights in the hall, boy was it ever dark, plus, I was holding the notepad (no desk) plus my handwriting is not the best in the world.  So there were more than a few things I couldn't read.

Two men, Edward H. Amet and George Kirke Spoor had a lot to do with the movie industry in Waukegan.

Edward Hill Amet (Nov.10, 1860 to August 16, 1948), an electric engineer and inventor, was born in Philadelphia, and worked for a time with Thomas Edison.  In 1891, he developed the first spring motor for phonographs and his Echophone was the first cylinder phonograph to have a distinct tone arm.

In 1894, he was living in Waukegan, Illinois, where he teamed up with George Kirke Spoor, a theater manager, and they financed and developed a new projector they called a magniscope.  Their first film was of two young women boxing each other for ten minutes, calling it "Young Ladies in a Boxing Exhibition."

--CootBoxer