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The first partially successful photograph of a camera image was made in approximately 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce, using a very small camera of his own making and a piece of paper coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light.
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This is the first sound ever recorded, by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Ironically, the "phonautograph" was designed only to record sounds, not to play them back. The 10 seconds ghostly voice is a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune"
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The first machine patented in the United States that showed animated pictures. Patented by William Lincoln, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit.
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The nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. Usually set up in converted storefronts, these small, simple theaters charged five cents for admission and flourished
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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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Two French brothers, Louis and August Lumiere patent a combination movie camera and projector, capable of projecting an image that can be seen by many people. In Paris, they present the first commercial exhibition of projected motion pictures. Lumiere and his brother were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, pictures to a paying audience of more that one person.
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Edison Corporation mechanic Edwin S. Porter turns cameraman, director and producer to make The Great Train Robbery. With 14 shots cutting between simultaneous events, this 12-minute short establishes the shot as film's basic element and editing as a central narrative device. It is also the first Western.
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The first animated cartoon is produced.Fantasmagorie is an 1908 French animated film by Émile Cohl. It is one of the earliest examples of traditional (hand-drawn) animation, and considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon
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Credits begin to appear at the beginning of motion pictures.
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Warner Bros. is established.
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Walt Disney’s first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is released.
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American cinema brought such films as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with The Wind.
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The phenomenal success in the 1970s of Jaws and Star Wars in particular, led to the rise of the modern “blockbuster”. Hollywood studios increasingly focused on producing a smaller number of very large budget films with massive marketing and promotional campaigns.
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Americans spend $12 billion to buy or rent video tapes, compared to just $4.9 billion on box office ticket sales. 76% of households have VCR players.
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1994 Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen form the film studio DreamWorks.
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The first feature length computer-animated feature, Toy Story, was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney. After the success of Toy Story, computer animation began to grow and became the principal technique for feature length animation, which allowed competing film companies such as Dreamworks Animation and 20th Century Fox to effectively compete with Disney with successful films of their own.
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The documentary film began to escalate as a commercial genre for conceivably the first time, with the success of films such as March of the Penguins and Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.
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More films began being released simultaneously to IMAX cinema, the first was Disney animation Treasure Planet.
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The Dark Knight was the first major feature film to have been at least partially shot in IMAX technology.
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onward 3D films gained increasing popularity with many other films being released in 3D. The best critical and financial success was the feature film animation of Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar’s Toy Story 3.
