Georges Demenÿ was Etienne-Jules Marey's assistant at his laboratory, the Station Physiologique, for many years, but they ultimately disagreed on on how to exploit chronophotography: Demenÿ was interested in commercializing it, while Marey was focused on using it as a scientific tool. By 1894 they parted company.

In 1895, Demenÿ partnered with Léon Gaumont to develop a chronophotographic camera, the Biographe, and market it along with the Bioscope, a disc-based phenakistoscope projector. The Biographe used 60 mm film, but the film was unperforated. As a result, the frames were unevenly spaced and the images had to be cut out and attached to a Bioscope disc. Once the Lumières made their cinematograph public at the end of 1895, Demenÿ realized he would have to abandon the disc in favor of a camera and projector that used perforated film. Demenÿ introduced the beater-cam mechanism for advancing the film intermittently. This was demonstrated in April 1896. Still using 60 mm film, it was advertised as capable of projecting images of 40 square meters. Although the Gaumont company stopped manufacturing the camera and projector fairly quickly, Demenÿ's beater cam mechanism was used as a lower-cost alternative to the maltese cross until the mid-1910s.