The device was first theorised by Thomas Edison, but Edison’s employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892 developed most of it. Dickinson and his team also developed the Kinetograph, which was an early motion picture camera with stop-and-go film movement. This was used to photograph movies for in-house experiments and eventually commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
While a prototype was shown at a convention of the National Federations of Women’s Club on May 20th 1891, but it was not fully publically demonstrated until May 9th 1893 at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. An early prototype of the Kinetoscope was the Kinetophone, which was an actual attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound film system.