Since the invention of the camera, it wasn't long before the idea of moving pictures came about. Initially, photographers would take many images, one after the other, of a moving subject and then display them in quick succession giving the illusion of a moving image. This process was known as chronophotography, and the devices used to display the moving images were used mostly by scientists studying motion.
In the year 1888 however, a Frenchman named Louis Le Prince had managed to develop a camera that could take pictures in rapid succession and put them onto paper film. Following this, a small number of other inventors improved upon this idea with the addition of celluloid film and a small electric motor. By the mid-1890s the movie camera was a practical invention that could mass-marketed.
This immediately gave rise to many companies and individuals producing small short films of everyday things from kissing, to running, to a train pulling into a station. These would usually be screened to the public as a form of entertainment which would eventually lead onto the creation of plots and narratives for the short films. By the early 1900s the film industry was born, with the likes of Georges Méliès' "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) being regarded as the first modern "movie" with its length, story, and special effects having a significant influence on the development of narrative film as a whole.
