Man's need to record himself in action goes back to early cave paintings. Vivid examples are extant both in Spain and southern France. A later example worth citing is the Indonesian leather puppet shadow shows of Java where filigree action shadows are cast on a screen as entertainment. Better known examples include magic lanterns shows, motion toys, panoramas and dioramas, each having its own technique and unique history.

At the end of the nineteenth century California philanthropist Leland Stanford got into the act when he hired Eadweard Muybridges, the wilderness photographer, to help him prove that all four horse's hooves are off the ground when running. This six-year project proved Stanford's hypothesis, and incidentally, a bet Stanford had wagered to that effect .This incident prompted Muybridges to take to the lecture circuit with a film of his experiment.. He enhanced screen possibilities and at the same time added to the knowledge of sequence photography recording motion.

George Eastman, an American inventor and manufacturer, developed "celluloid film" together with William H. Walter. This piece of the process moved ahead, together with Ettienne Jules Marey's idea of the roll film, yet another step forward in the making of moving picture entertainment

It was Thomas Alva Edison's interest in moving pictures in 1888 that gave the entire project a firm foundation. Although he was busy for a three-year period and did not get to the project personally, Edison did obtain the Eastman film. His employee, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, was given the task of working on the problem of both the process of moving film through the Kinetograph camera and propelling the image through a machine to view the picture - the Kinetoscope. The basis of cinematography was the exposure of 16 undeveloped frames per second through a shutter mechanism using a 35mm wide filmstrip. Edison patented his invention and thus the "nickelodeons" were born in 1894. With an upgrade to 24 frames per second, this is still the standard used today.

Edison's first effort was only the beginning as it was not a projected motion picture. The Lumiere Brothers in France were the first to produce projected moving pictures. Their initial productions, shown in Paris on December 28, 1895, were realistic depictions of scenes from daily life and proved to be a great hit. The company continued its innovative techniques such as a sequence of events, close-ups, constructing mise-en-scene, and adding to their stocks by "shooting reality" shots for their catalogue until 1905 when they left the business. Before the century was out, in addition to Edison, The Biograph Company was very much in competition with him, as well as the Georges Melieres Company, the forerunner for horror, science fiction, and dark comedy genres.

Filmmaking began in earnest at the end of the nineteenth century. Both style and form were haphazard. Edwin S. Porter was the first serious filmmaker in the first decade of the century and worked for the Edison Company in a style known as "primitive." Lacking any criteria for organizing his duties for making films, he operated the camera, directed the actors, processed the negative, edited the film, maintained the equipment and even paid the bills. Though he kept up the pace for ten years, the company became critical of his methods and he was asked to leave. In later years he was hailed for this courage and hard work in a job without an obvious precedent. Among the memorable films Porter made for Edison in 1903 are The Life of an American Fireman, The Great Train Robbery, and prior to these, The Kleptomaniac, a social commentary on justice. All received recognition in Europe and America for their story lines, techniques and originality. Many consider The Great Train Robbery the classic American film, and certainly it was the single most original until 1912. Porter's use of ellipses to get on with the story line and to leave out non-essentials created great excitement about film as audiences readily understood the technique. The final scene of the film has the sheriff killing off the last of three bandits by pointing his gun directly at the camera. That finale both thrilled and frightened the audience and left them anxious for more