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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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Etienne Marey in France develops a camera, shaped like a gun, that can take twelve pictures per second.
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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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Thomas Edison displays his Kinetoscope at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and receives patents for his movie camera, the Kinetograph, and his peepshow device.
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Coin-operated Kinetoscopes appear in a New York City amusement arcade.
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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.
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Thomas Edison's company, using a projector built by Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins, projects hand-tinted motion pictures in New York City.
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Edison files the first of many patent infringement suits, claiming that others are using equipment based on his Kinetograph camera.
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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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Edwin S. Porter, chief of production at the Edison studio, helps to shift film production toward story telling with such films as The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, the first western.