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1878–1887 Chronophotography and early animated recordings

Most early photographic sequences, known as chronophotography, were not initially intended to be viewed in motion and were typically presented as a serious, even scientific, method of studying locomotion. The sequences almost exclusively involved humans or animals performing a simple movement in front of the camera.^[10] Starting in 1878 with the publication of The Horse in Motion cabinet cards, photographer Eadweard Muybridge began making hundreds of chronophotographic studies of the motion of animals and humans in real-time. He was soon followed by other chronophotographers like Étienne-Jules Marey, Georges Demenÿ, Albert Londe and Ottomar Anschütz. In 1879, Muybridge started lecturing on animal locomotion and used his Zoopraxiscope to project animations of the contours of his recordings, traced onto glass discs. Long after the introduction of cinema, Muybridge's recordings would occasionally be animated into very short films with fluent motion (relatively often the footage can be presented as a loop that repeats the motion seamlessly).^[11]

In 1887, the German inventor and photographer Ottomar Anschütz began presentations of his chronophotographic recordings in motion using a device he called the Elektrischen Schnellseher (also known as the Electrotachyscope), which displayed the images using a small milk glass screen. By 1891, he had developed and started mass production on a more portable and economical peep-box viewing device of the same name. For public presentations of the short loops, he started recording and adding topics that were more amusing than the usual motion studies, such as wrestlers, dancers, acrobats, and scenes of everyday life. Though little evidence remains for most of these recordings, some scenes probably depicted staged comical scenes and extant records suggest they may have directly influenced later works by the Edison Company, such as the 1894 film, Fred Ott's Sneeze.^[12]

1888–1895: First motion pictures and early film projection

Limited in part by technologies of the era, films in the late 19th century were usually brief and unsophisticated in narrative form. Instead, filmmakers largely focused on displaying the objective role of the camera as an "unblinking human eye" with which to record reality through the production of actuality films.^[13]

On 10 January 1888, the French artist and inventor Louis Le Prince registered the first British patent for a camera that was capable of filming motion.^[14] He recorded the earliest known motion picture in extant on 14 October 1888. The film, later known as Roundhay Garden Scene, was an actuality film that lasted 1.66 seconds and briefly depicted Le Prince's family in motion.^[15] The following year, Le Prince filmed a short sequence of traffic on Leeds Bridge in England and successfully created a device that could project images in rapid succession using a Geneva drive. Le Prince mysteriously disappeared on 16 September 1890 en route to Paris to present his invention.^[16]

In June 1889, American inventor Thomas Edison assigned a lab assistant, William Kennedy Dickson, to help develop a device that could produce visuals to accompany the sounds produced from the phonograph. Building upon contributions by Muybridge, Marey, and other predecessors, Dickson and his team created the Kinetoscope.^[17] The device allowed a singular watcher to look through a peep-hole to view a motion picture loop that could be presented for about half a minute before starting over. On 20 May 1891, Edison introduced the device to an audience for the first time.^[18] Many of the movies presented on the Kinetoscope showcased well-known vaudeville acts performing simple movements in Edison's Black Maria studio.^[19] The Kinetoscope quickly became a global sensation with multiple viewing parlors across major cities by 1895.^[20] As the initial novelty of the images wore off and the Edison Company failed to diversify their repertoire of films, a lack of public interest caused business to slow by Spring 1895. To remedy declining profits, experiments, such as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, were conducted in an attempt to achieve the device's original goal of providing visual accompaniment for sound recordings. Limitations in syncing the sound to the visuals, however, prevented widespread application.^[21] During that same period, inventors (building upon the success of earlier magic lantern shows) began advancing technologies towards film projection that would eventually overtake Edison's peep-box format.^[22]