Edinburgh was quick off the mark when it came to cinema, showing its first examples of ‘the cinematographe’ during the first half of 1896 – barely a year after the Lumière brothers had patented the process.Early films were shown in buildings adapted to screen them, but it wouldn’t be long before Edinburgh and other towns across Scotland were opening their first purpose-built cinemas. We’ve been building and demolishing them ever since.
Source: Edinburgh’s lost cinema houses remembered – The Scotsman