Oskar Messter

Oskar Messter was a German inventor and film tycoon in the early years of cinema. His firm Messter Film was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, into which it was ultimately merged.

He was born in Berlin, where his father had founded a company selling and manufacturing optical equipment in 1859. Messter built and sold his first movie projector in 1896, one of the first projectors using a Geneva drive to achieve the intermittent motion of the film. He is often credited with inventing this application of the Geneva drive, but both Max Gliewe and Robert W. Paul in London independently built projectors using this mechanism for film transport at about the same time. Gliewe later joined Messters company, and together they produced highly successful projectors already in his first year, Messter sold 64 units.

Source: Wikipedia