Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat publicly demonstrated a device in Atlanta in 1895 at the Cotton States Exposition that they called the "Phantoscope" which projected motion pictures onto a wall or screen for a moderately large audience. The pair of inventors, heady with the scent of success,soon became at odds with one another and began fighting over credit for the invention.

Armat, armed with legal authority, independently shopped the Phantoscope to Kinetoscope Company who realized that their version of an early movie projector, the Kinetoscope, would soon be a thing of the past with the rapid advancing proliferation of early cinematic engineering. They were very interested in this newest magic lantern and approached Thomas Edison for financing the manufacture of the instrument -- and even producing films for it in the new Edison movie studio, Edison's Black Maria.

Edison agreed to the arrangement on one condition: in classic Edison style, he would henceforth be credited with the invention of the machine that he renamed the "Vitascope". [1]