Thomas Armat (Notable Resident / Film Projector Inventor)

Thomas Armat was born in Fredericksburg on October 25, 1866, at 611 Caroline Street. He studied at the Mechanics Institute in Richmond, then at the Bliss Electrical School in Washington, where in 1894 he met Charles Francis Jenkins. The two co-invented a film projector using a new intermittent motion "beater mechanism" and an extra loop of film — what became known as the Latham loop — to keep the film from tearing under tension. They called it the Phantoscope and demonstrated it publicly at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in September 1895.

Jenkins tried to claim sole inventorship. After the dispute, Armat partnered with Thomas Edison, who marketed the machine as the Vitascope. The first commercial public screening using it opened in New York City on April 23, 1896, and ran for more than a week. In 1947, Armat received a Special Academy Award as one of the movie pioneers. He died on September 30, 1948.