The other theory of the bioscope’s origin has to do with Charles Urban.

Before Urban arrived in India to film the Durbar…

…he had invented the original ‘bioscope’ projector…

…which arrived in India in 1896,

back when the Lumiere Brothers were first showing their films in Bombay.

Bioscope comes from the Greek:

bios > life +

skopeein > to look.

In the 1920s and 30s, traveling cinemas started cropping up all over the Indian countryside as tag-alongs to traveling stage-plays, fairgrounds, or operas. In those early days, films were rarely shown as stand-alone entertainment, but rather housed as part of a larger event, or tamasha.

Urban's bioscope did not require electricity which made it ideal for this uniquely Indian brand of peripatetic cinema.

Before the opium industry in Bombay had made enough capital to begin the production of Indian films there in earnest, the projectionists, or ‘bioscopewalas’ had to rely on European and American junk reels for their stock…

….which they sometimes cobbled together and showed to audiences in tents, or in open fields under the stars.

These bioscopewalas then pushed deeper and deeper into the Indian countryside and over the decades diversified - some relying on newer technologies, and others carrying on with older devices.