There have been a great number of people and inventions that led to the creation of cinema as we know it today. Here we will attempt to touch upon only the most significant points.

Etienne Gaspard Robertson: In the 1790s, Belgian showman Etienne Gaspard Robertson invented the Phantascope (shown on the right). A lantern inside a box on wheels would project images onto smoke to create images of ghosts and other creatures to scare audiences. Known as "Phantasmagoria" shows, Robertson was not the only showman to produce such shows. However, he is the best known today because his device had wheels, which made it possible to make the projected images move around and change size by moving the projector around. Phantasmagoria showmen usually kept their projectors out of sight behind a translucent screen to make the effects more believable. The devices are important to the history of cinema since they can be considered the first projector and even projected images that appeared to move.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce: In 1816 France, Niépce captured the first photographic image ( a negative image), but it faded away within hours. It wasn't until 1826, that Niépce captured the world's first permanent photographic image (shown on the left). This was a picture taken of the view from his 2nd floor workroom in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, Le Gras, France and required at least an eight hour exposure. Interestingly, the image was captured on a piece of pewter. Certainly, the invention of the photograph was a crutial step in the history of motion pictures.

Niépce used a camera obscura to capture his photograph. This invention had been around for centuries and Johannes Kepler is the person credited with coining the phrase "Camera Obscura" in 1604. As early as 1609, Kepler had also suggested placing a lens over the opening to better focus the image. The camera obscura was a box with a small hole in one end to allow light to pass into the box. Such boxes could even be room-size so the artist could stand within it. The image, which would appear upside down on a piece of paper on the back wall of the box, could then be used by artists to trace images. It is easy to see how such devices were a precurser to the modern camera.

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau: In 1836, Belgian Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau invented the phenakistiscope. This device consisted of two disks, with images drawn on one of them and created the illusion of moving images. Since modern film consists of showing still images in rapid succession to create the illusion of motion, this device (shown on the right) can certainly be considered a precurser to motion pictures.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre In 1829 France, Daguerre formed a partnership with Niépce to improve the process Niépce had developed for taking the first permanent photograph. Niépce died in 1833 and it wasn't until 1837 that Daguerre finally developed the daguerreotype process in France. His process was sold to the French government in 1839 and only then did the public learn of it. The daguerreotype process used copper plates and initially required 3 to 15 minutes of exposure time.

After this point, photography rapidly developed. Around May of 1840, Robert Cornelius and Dr. Paul Beck Goddard, opened a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia. Cornelius was able to reduce the required exposure time to a matter of seconds and by 1850 there were over 70 daguerreotype studios just in New York City alone. In 1841, William Henry Talbot invented the Calotype process, which created negatives on paper. This made it possible to make multiple copies of photographs. Then, in 1854, James Ambrose Cutting patented the ambrotype process, which used a glass plate to make negatives and the new process came to replace the daguerreotype process.

Eadweard Muybridge: In the 1877, English photographer Eadweard Muybridge rigged multiple cameras with strings that a horse would "trip" while running and thus created the first rapid fire picture series. With this method, he proved that there is a point in a horse's gallop when all four hoofs are in fact off the ground. In 1879, Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope (shown below), which made it possible to show his images in sequence, creating the first "motion picture".

George Eastman: In 1883, Eastman invented dry, transparent, and flexible, film (rolled photography film) and in 1888 invented Kodak cameras that could use the film. Meanwhile, in 1887, Episcopalian minister, Hannibal Goodwin first invented celluloid roll film (vs. paper-based film) and by 1888 Eastman was using Goodwin's invention. Despite all these rapid developments in photography, the modern flash bulb was not invented until 1927 by General Electric.

Louis Le Prince: The two second film that has become known as the Roundhay Garden Scene is thought to be the first moving picture film ever made. It was filmed at 20 frames per second by French inventor Louis Le Prince in 1888 at Oakwood Grange Road in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. If it wasn't the first film, then it is certainly the oldest known surviving film.

Nearly two years later, on September 16, 1890, while about to patent his invention in London and to perform the first official public exhibition in New York of his invention, Louis Le Prince mysteriously vanished after boarding a train in Dijon to make a trip to Paris. Hmmm... Then in 1902, two years after testifying against Thomas Edison's patent claim for inventing the moving picture camera, his son, Alphonse Le Prince, was found shot dead in New York while out duck shooting. Alphonse' death was labeled a suicide. Hmmm... (again).

Louis Le Prince's inventions are important cinematic events in history since they produced the first motion pictures ever made using a continuous strip of paper or celluloid of individually photographed frames projected in sequence to create motion. He also invented a projector with which to show his films.

Thomas Edison: In 1893, Edison built the first movie studio and named it the Black Maria (shown on the left). He used the movie studio to produce and show some of his own very earliest moving films. Although it is certainly recognized today that Edison did not invent motion pictures, nevertheless, by 1908 Edison was named sole inventor of motion pictures, in the U.S.

Charles Francis Jenkins: In 1894, Jenkins patented the first motion picture projector to use reeled film and electric light. He named the projector, the Phantascope.

Birth of the movies: By 1895 all these inventions, as well as others, were coming together to produce a demand for motion pictures. Opera houses, music halls, vaudeville theatres, and just about any other large building was starting to be used to show the short films that were being created everywhere. These films were typically no longer than a few minutes in length and the idea of having a plot to them was still unknown. At this point in time, audiences were mesmerized just by seeing motion pictures. It didn't matter what was actually being filmed.

The term "box-office" came into use about this time to refer to the box used for collecting admissions as makeshift movie houses began to spring up everywhere. The first theater in the US dedicated exclusively to showing motion pictures was Vitascope Hall, which opened in New Orleans, on June 26, 1896.

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