The Kinodome Motion Picture Record, and the device designed to play it, constitute a short-lived amateur moving image system that may have been only briefly, if ever, marketed to the public. With one projector and film known to exist, no known advertisements and scant references to its patents in contemporary trade journals, attempting to draw any hard conclusions about the format is a difficult endeavor.

However, there are some verifiable facts. Both components of the cinematographic apparatus were patented by Ferdinand von Madaler, an inventor and engineer born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose first experiments were carried out in Budapest. Von Madaler spent his lifetime innovating sound and film devices for companies across Europe and the United States. Many of his inventions focus on utilizing small-scale machinery, or projecting small images – this affinity naturally suited the creation of film formats for the amateur market. After moving first to France and then London, in 1906, von Madaler worked for a number of businesses, including his own Neophone Recording Company, and for a subsidiary of the German Neue Photographische Gesellschaft, the Rotary Photographic Company, which primarily produced silver bromide postcards and stereo cards for the mass-consumer market. It was for the Rotary Photographic Company that von Madaler filed patents detailing a film cartridge and projector system, in 1912 and 1914, respectively. Utilizing a 6mm film, drawn horizontally by means of edge notches from one circular metal hub to the other. The cartridge and projector were quite unlike any other film systems being produced at the time. Though the design of the projector and cartridge indicate that they were intended for the amateur market, the surviving film is recorded on flammable nitrate stock. The use of nitrate stock for the amateur market was a practice that would soon become frowned upon. In a 1912 letter to Thomas Edison, George Eastman called the use of nitrate for amateur home projectors “wholly indefensible and reprehensible” (Coe, 1981, p. 164). The Rotary Photographic Company was dissolved in 1916, during World War I, and although von Madaler’s initial patent of the film carrier was covered by The Bioscope, existing evidence – or, rather, the lack of it – suggests the Kinodome was never sold or marketed to consumers. (Anon., 1912)

In 1915, soon after his collaboration with the Rotary Photographic Company, Ferdinand von Madaler and his wife Katharina (an inventor herself, with multiple patents related to pairing recorded sound with moving images) emigrated to the United States where they would spend the remainder of their lives. Von Madaler continued to patent numerous innovations in the decades following the brief life of Kinodome, including many experiments with talking pictures. (Anon., 1947)