1880s

Throughout the late nineteenth century, a series of 'magic lantern' optical toys (such as the Phenakistoscope, the Zoetrope, and the Biophantic Lantern) presented short, repetitive animations exploiting the eye's persistence of vision (a phenomenon first reported by Peter Mark Roget in 1824). Coleman Sellers modified the Zoetrope, replacing its hand-drawn images with photographs, creating the Kinematoscope in 1861. Henry Renno Heyl then projected a series of Kinetoscope photographs, using his Phasmatrope device, in 1870.

Emil Reynaud, the inventor of another Zoetrope-like device, the Praxinoscope, also converted it into a projector. Although his images were all hand-drawn rather than photographic, they were presented on strips of celluloid (rather than on the discs used by all previous devices). Reynaud called his machine Theatre Optique, and used it to project Pantomimes Lumineuses presentations. His first public screening was a projection of Pauvre Pierrot (1892). Similarly, in 1886, William Friese-Greene collaborated with John Arthur Roebuck Rudge on a Biophantascope capable of projecting magic lantern slides in rapid succession.

Motion Photography

Eadweard Muybridge used a series of Zoopraxiscope cameras, operated in rapid succession, to photograph the movements of a horse's legs; his results, published in 1878, seem retrospectively to be prototypical (albeit horizontal) film strips.

Etienne-Jules Marey developed Muybridge's technique, creating a single camera capable of capturing a series of rapid exposures which he called Chronophotographie. Otto Anschutz invented a device capable of projecting Chronophotographie images in rapid sequence; he first demonstrated this Electrotachyscope in Berlin in 1894.

The very first moving photographic images were filmed in 1888. Louis LePrince, using a camera he had invented himself, recorded approximately two seconds of 'actuality' footage known as Roundhay Garden Scene in Leeds, England. He is also thought to have projected the footage, from a paper filmstrip at twelve frames-per-second, in the same city. (Projection speeds for silent films were not standardised, though twenty-four frames-per-second became the standard speed for all sound films.)