In 1883, at age 23, the brother Dickson earned the employment of Thomas Edison at his Machine Works company in New York City.

[2] In 1888, Edison commissioned Dickson for the development of what would become the kinetoscope, an early means of playing back motion picture film.

[b][1] The book is considered by scholars of the medium the first published history on the subject of film,[8] with the art critic Nancy Mowll Mathews calling it unprecedented.

From the authors' combined tone, Jacobs perceived the Dicksons' excitement at having the privilege to observe popular film actors and to have worked in his industry at its infancy.

[11] The literary critic Laura Marcus found the book's scientific approach in tension with its purpose to market but conceded that the eponymous devices had a psychic nature intrinsically.

[7] Marcus noted the harmony of the Dicksons' view of film as both uncanny and natural and of their opinion of the "Black Maria" as both a nursery and a laboratory like that depicted in Frankenstein.

[13] Stéphanie Côté of the Journal of Film Preservation recommended the book for its importance as well but noted the difficulty of the brother Dickson's writing.