Joseph Timchenko

Joseph Andriyovych Tymchenko (Ukrainian: Йосип Андрійович Тимченко; 26 April 1852 – 20 May 1924) was a Ukrainian inventor and mechanic. He is best known for his invention of a type of film camera in 1893, which was a predecessor to the inventions of Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1895. Timchenko was born into a serf peasant family in the Kharkiv Governorate of the Russian Empire, where he worked at the mechanical workshop of Kharkiv University until 1874, when he moved to the city of Odesa. He then worked for much of his career as a mechanic at Odesa University, where he developed a wide range of inventions, including pressure-testing devices, railway electrical signals, and underwater mines. In the summer of 1893, he constructed a prototype film camera, later known as the "Tymchenko snail", and on 9 January 1894 gave one of the earliest public demonstrations of projected moving pictures at the Ninth Congress of Natural Scientists and Physicians of the Russian Empire in Moscow. Despite receiving numerous awards throughout his career, Timchenko's workshop at the Odesa University was destroyed in 1920, and he died in poverty in 1924, receiving little recognition for his inventions during his lifetime.