The mutoscope was an early form of motion picture device. Like Edison's Kinetoscope it did not project on a screen, and provided viewing to only one person at a time. Cheaper and simpler than the kinetoscope, it quickly dominated the coin-in-the-slot "peep-show" business.
The mutoscope worked on the same principle as the "flip-book." The individual image frames were conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards. Rather than being bound into a booklet, the cards were attached to a circular reel, rather like a huge Rolodex. A reel typically held about 850 cards, giving a viewing time of about a minute. The reel with cards attached had a total diameter of about ten inches.
Mutoscopes were coin-operated. The patron viewed the cards through a pair of lenses enclosed by a hood, similar to the viewing hood of a stereoscope. The cards were lit electrically, but the reel was driven by means of a geared-down hand crank. Each machine held only a single reel and was dedicated to the presentation of a single short subject, described by a poster affixed to the machine.
The patron could control the presentation speed only to a limited degree. The crank could be turned only in one direction, preventing the patron from reversing and repeating part of the reel. Nor could the patron extend viewing time by stopping the crank or cranking very slowly, because the flexible images were bent into the proper viewing position by tension applied from forward cranking. Stopping the crank or slowing it too much threw the images far enough out of focus to blur them beyond recognition.
Mutoscopes were originally manufactured from 1895 to 1909 by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, then revived and manufactured from 1926 until 1949 by the International Mutoscope Reel Company (a completely different organization which purchased the manufacturing rights).
Mutoscopes were popular in penny arcades and amusement parks through the 1960s. The typical arcade installation included multiple machines offering a mixture of fare. Both in the early days and during the revival, that mixture usually included "girlie" reels which ran the gamut from risqué to outright soft-core pornography. It was, however, common for these reels to have suggestive titles that implied more than the reel actually delivered. The title of one such reel, "What the Butler Saw," became a by-word, and mutoscopes are commonly known in England as "What-the-butler-saw machines." (What the butler saw, presumably through a keyhole, was a woman partially disrobing).
In 1899 the Times of London printed a letter inveighing against "vicious demoralising picture shows in the penny-in-the-slot machines. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the corruption of the young that comes from exhibiting under a strong light, nude female figures represented as living and moving, going into and out of baths, sitting as artists' models etc. Similar exhibitions took place at Rhyl in the men's lavatory, but, owing to public denunciation, they have been stopped."
A collector's site describes the contents of one such reel "a massage parlor scene with one woman in bra and panties messaging another woman who wears only a sheet, manufactured by the International Mutoscope Reel Company, New York." "Birth of the Pearl" is the title of a reel which "pictures a nude woman rising from a seashell and standing." The site notes "this reel has some damage to a whole chunk of photos. They are all in a section where there was full frontal nudity and the cards are quite worn off."
A British firm called Mutoscope Manufacturers Extraordinaire still manufactures mutoscopes as a specialty item for "educational exhibitions, art galleries, and visitors centers;" one such installation at a wildlife reserve displays a time-lapse movie showing the tides coming in an out of a bay.
