Herman A. DeVry

Herman Adolf DeVry (November 26, 1876 – March 23, 1941) was an American inventor, aviator, and colleague of Lee de Forest. DeVry is credited with creating the first portable motion picture projector, which he called a Theatre in a Suitcase. He was the founder of the DeVry Company. Early life Herman Adolf DeVry was born on November 26, 1876, in Mecklenburg, Germany. He was the son of Wilhelm Heinrich DeVry (1843–1921) and Kunigunde (1845–1933; born Steuwe). Herman and his family immigrated to the United States in 1886, when he was 10 years old. His father worked as a common laborer, but DeVry wanted to do more with his life. He became interested in photography and film at an early age, an obsession that would continue throughout the rest of his life. Career and Invention He began working at a penny arcade, where the owner had a brand new Lumiere motion picture camera. He traveled through the American West and held a variety of jobs related to film, including working at a movie theater in Omaha, Nebraska, where he showed The Battle of Manila by Thomas Edison during the Trans-Mississippi Exposition of 1898. Throughout this time, he was interested in reducing the size of the film projection equipment he worked with. In 1910, he began working as a cameraman for the Industrial Film Company, owned by Watterson Rothacker, in Chicago, Illinois. Two years later, DeVry had developed a new type of 35mm film projector which could be carried in its own small suitcase. The original hand-built prototype portable projector is today on display at the Smithsonian. By 1919, DeVry had risen through the ranks to control the Industrial Film Company, and he changed the company's name—the DeVry company was born.