Woodville Latham

Major Woodville Latham (1837–1911) was an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and professor of chemistry at West Virginia University.

In December 1894 Latham and his two sons formed the Lambda Company at 35 Frankfort Street, employing Eugène Lauste, a former Thomas Edison employee, as well as motion picture pioneer William Kennedy Dickson.

Dickson would not leave Edison's employ until April 1895 and initially lent his expertise to the Lathams in secret.

The Eidoloscope was demonstrated for members of the press on April 21, 1895, and opened to the paying public on May 20,[1][2] in a lower Broadway store with films of the Griffo-Barnett prize boxing fight, taken from Madison Square Garden's roof on May 4.

Latham, aided by the collaboration of Dickson and Lauste, is notable for the invention of the Latham loop inside movie cameras and projectors, a significant development in the history of cinema because it allowed motion pictures to be continuously shot and projected for a much longer period than the one-minute films of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope.