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Jan 1, 1500
Before Time
18000BC - Cave Paintings - flickering shadows7000BC - Shadow puppets2000BC - Ancient Greek drew figures on vases in various stages of movment180AD - Earliest prototype for Zoetrope - Ting Huan China -
Chinese Magic Lantern
The Chinese and Japanese made Magic Mirrors, the earliest recorded instance occurred in 5th century AD Chinese documents. A Magic Mirror is basically a highly polished disk of bronze. When light from a small bright source is reflected from the mirror onto a screen an image is produced (usually of the Buddha) although no image is visible on the mirror itself. -
The Persistence of Vision
Lecture and essay - Peter Roget Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina -
Phenakistoscope - Joseph Plateau
In 1832, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and his sons introduced the phenakistoscope ("spindle viewer"). The phenakistoscope uses the persistence of motion principle to create an illusion of motion. Although this principle had been recognized by the Greek mathematician Euclid and later in experiments by Newton, it was not until 1829 that this principle became firmly established by Joseph Plateau.
The phenakistoscope consisted of two discs mounted on the same axis. The first disc had slots -
Zoetrope Daedalum - George Horner
A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. -
Flicker Book
A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. -
Praxinoscope - Charles Emile Reynaud
The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would t -
Eadweard May Bridge
an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. -
Theatre Optique - Charles-Émile Reynaud
The Théâtre Optique was a moving picture show presented by Charles-Émile Reynaud in 1892. It was the first presentation of projected moving images to an audience, predating Auguste and Louis Lumière's first public performance by three years. -
Louis & Auguste Lumiere - Brothers
The Lumières held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895.Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris.This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds. -
Arthur Melbourne-Cooper called Matches (1899).
The earliest surviving stop-motion advertising film was an English short by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper called Matches: An Appeal (1899). Developed for the Bryant and May Matchsticks company, it involved stop-motion animation of wired-together matches writing a patriotic call to action on a blackboard -
Special Effects - George Melies
The illusions or tricks of the eye used in the film, television, theatre, videogame, or simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world are traditionally called special effects
Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital film-making tools a greater distinction between special effects and visual effects has been recognized, wi -
Stop-Motion - Hand Drwn
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames.
J Stuart Blackton - Cited as first true animator -
Fantasmagorie - Emile Cohl
1908 French animated film by Émile Cohl. Its one of the earliest examples of traditional hand-drawn animation, and considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon. -
Jurassic Park
this was the first film to use computer animation.
