This page lists chronologically the first achievements in cinema. The development of cinema is characterized by technological breakthroughs, from early experiments in the recording of day-to-day activity, experiments in color, different formats and sound. From the 1970s, the development of computer-generated imagery (CGI) became integral to the way that films are produced. In parallel with the developments in technology, its content and the way it reflects society and its concerns and the way society responds to it have changed too. The list attempts to address some of these events.
Pre-1826
1824 Peter Mark Roget wrote the article Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel when seen through vertical apertures which described a stroboscopic illusion.
1826–1875
1832 Almost simultaneously, around December 1832, the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and the Austrian professor of practical geometry Simon Stampfer invented the Phenakistiscope, the first practical device to create a fluid illusion of motion. Plateau introduced the device in January 1833 in a scientific magazine.
1874 French astronomer P.J.C. Janssen came up with the idea for a "revolver to shoot the individual". This huge camera system used a Maltese cross-type mechanism, very similar to the system that would later be of great importance in the development of movie cameras. Janssen successfully captured two transits of Venus, the one of 1874 in Japan, and that of 1882 at Oran, in Algeria. Discs with test footage of a simulation from 1874 have been preserved and a modern animated version is sometimes regarded as the first movie.
1876–1925
1878 Using a battery of 12 cameras Eadweard Muybridge records several series of The Horse in Motion, capturing successive phases of movements that allowed his patron Leland Stanford to study the positions of the legs of his race horses during different gaits. The technique would soon be dubbed chronophotography.
1880 During his lectures on locomotion, Eadweard Muybridge projected looping animations of The Horse in Motion with his Zoopraxiscope. The stroboscopic apparatus used glass discs on which silhouette versions of the photographs had been traced by an artist (with anamorphic corrections for the distortion caused by fast rotation).
1882 Étienne-Jules Marey developed the Chronophotographe, which could take 12 pictures per second from a single viewpoint.
1888 In Leeds, England Louis Le Prince films Roundhay Garden Scene, believed to be the first motion picture recorded.
1889 or 1890 Monkeyshines was made by William Kennedy Dickson and William Heise as an experimental film to test the original cylinder Kinetograph format. The blurry result is believed to be the first film shot in the United States.
1891 Dickson Greeting, by William Kennedy Dickson, was the first semi-public demonstration of cinematographic pictures in the United States. The National Federation of Women's Clubs were shown a 3-second clip of Dickson passing a hat in front of himself, and reaching for it with his other hand on May 20, 1891, at Edison's laboratory.
1892 On October 28, 1892, Charles-Émile Reynaud gave the first public performance of a moving picture show at the Musée Grévin in Paris, the Théâtre Optique. The show, billed as Pantomimes Lumineuses, included three cartoons, Pauvre Pierrot, Un bon bock, and Le Clown et ses chiens, each consisting of 500 to 600 individually painted images and lasting about 15 minutes. The film was the first to use perforations.
1893 Blacksmith Scene, by William Kennedy Dickson. The first Kinetoscope film shown in public exhibition on May 9, 1893, and is the earliest known example of actors performing a role in a film. The world's first film production studio, the Black Maria, or the Kinetographic Theater, was completed on the grounds of Edison's laboratories at West Orange, New Jersey, for the purpose of making film strips for the Kinetoscope. Construction began in December 1892.
1894 On April 14, 1894, a public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street—the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different film. For 25 cents, a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill. The Dolorita Passion Dance was banned in New Jersey after its use in peepshows. Russell Kick quotes the work Censorship as saying it "was probably the first [film] to be banned in the United States." La Sortie des Usines, the first film to be made in France. The Dickson Experimental Sound Film by William Kennedy Dickson. It is the first known film with live-recorded sound and appears to be the first motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the proto-sound-film system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison.
1895 First hand-colored film, Annabelle Serpentine Dance by William Kennedy Dickson. Charles Francis Jenkins displays the Phantascope, the first patented film projector. Incident at Clovelly Cottage by Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres is the first film to be made in the United Kingdom. L'Arroseur Arrosé, the first comedy film. The Execution of Mary Stuart, the first use of special effects in film. History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph by Antonia and William Kennedy Dickson, considered the first book of history on film, is published.
1896 The first building dedicated exclusively to showing motion pictures was the Vitascope Hall, established on Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 26 — it was converted from a vacant store. Later that year on October 19, the Edisonia Hall opened in Buffalo, New York in the Ellicott Square Building. The Edisonia was the first known dedicated, purpose-built motion picture theater in the world. Alice Guy-Blaché, the first female film director makes La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) acknowledged as the first narrative fiction film. This movie also introduces screenplays for the first time. In The Kiss, May Irwin and John Rice re-enact the kiss from the New York stage hit The Widow Jones, the first film of a couple kissing. The House of the Devil, the first horror film. Le Coucher de la Mariée, a French erotic short film considered to be one of the first erotic films made. The film was first screened in Paris in November 1896, within a year of the first public screening of a projected motion picture.
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