It was the durability and flexibility of the roll film that enabled Edison laboratories to invent the Kinetograph, the first true motion picture camera. One hundred and nineteen years ago, Thomas Edison patented his first movie camera called the Kinetograph. Thomas A. Edison applied for a patent for a motion picture system developed primarily by his laboratory assistant, William Kennedy Dickson. The system featured a camera called the Kinetograph (from the Greek for a motion camera)and a viewer called the Kinetoscope (from the Greek for a motion viewer).