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Johann H. Schulze, a German physicist, discovers that silver salts turn dark when exposed to light.
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Carl Scheele, a Swedish chemist, shows that the changes in the color of the silver salts could be made permanent through the use of chemicals
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the invention of the Thaumatrope (the earliest version of an optical illusion toy that exploited the concept of "persistence of vision" first presented by Peter Mark Roget in a scholarly article) by an English doctor named Dr. John Ayrton Paris
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A French inventor, Nicephore Niepce, produces a permanent image by coating a metal plate with a light-sensitive chemical and exposing the plate to light for about eight hours
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the invention of the Praxinoscope by French inventor Charles Emile Reynaud - it was a 'projector' device with a mirrored drum that created the illusion of movement with picture strips, a refined version of the Zoetrope with mirrors at the center of the drum instead of slots; public demonstrations of the Praxinoscope were made by the early 1890s with screenings of 15 minute 'movies' at his Parisian Theatre Optique
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British photographer Eadweard Muybridge takes the first successful photographs of motion, showing how people and animals move.
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Thomas Edison and W.K. Dickson develop the Kinetoscope, a peep-show device in which film is moved past a light.
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Henry Miles sets up the first film exchange, allowing exhibitors to rent films instead of buying them.
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Cooper Hewitt mercury lamps make it practical to shoot films indoors without sunlight
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Harry Davis opens the first nickelodeon in Pittsburgh.
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The first animated cartoon is produced.
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There are about 9,000 movie theaters in the United States. The typical film is only a single reel long, or ten- to twelve minutes in length, and the performers were anonymous.
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20th Century Fox begins distributing pinups of actress Betty Grable.
Warner Bros. releases Mission to Moscow.
The War Production Board orders theaters to dim their marquee lights at 10 p.m. -
The first made-for-TV film, See How They Run, is broadcast on NBC.
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The Blair Witch Project, which cost $30,000 to make, grosses $125 million, making it the most profitable film in Hollywood history.
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The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appeared in newspapers one day after its creator Charles M. Schulz died of colon cancer. The popular comic strip debuted 50 years earlier.
