The Kinora was invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1896, one year after they released the Cinématographe. Unlike the Lumière Cinématographe, the Kinora was originally designed as an individual motion picture viewing device.
The Kinora was essentially an adapted version of the Mutoscope, a popular motion picture viewing device used in public venues at the time. Similarly, it used a flipbook mechanism to animate hundreds of paper-based photographs attached to a reel.