Over a hundred years ago, a British photographer created a rudimentary technology that led to a cultural revolution around the world. Along with the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison, it led to the creation of the first working film projector by the Lumiere brothers in 1888. On the outside, a movie projector seems like a simple machine. The film goes in and an image comes out. While the inputs and outputs are the same as expected, the process is not. This machine is more complicated than it seems.

It is important to look at the film projector as part of a socio-technical system because there are several different ways in which the technology and society have influenced each other. From rural China post 1949 to Nazi Germany during World War II to the American household in the 1920s, the film projector is a key factor in building communities and disseminating knowledge.