In cinema in order to follow a person or get movement of that nature u had to use a dolly. A dolly is basically a track which a tripod goes onto and then you slide that tripod along it to get the camera movement. That all changed in 1975 when a man named Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam or as it was formally known the "Brown Stabilizer". IT basically consists of weights at the bottom and a 2 axis gimbal in order to create smooth shots. In order to demonstrate this he showed a demo reel of things you could with it. One example was he jumped over a 3 ft ledge using the Steadicam. This type of shot would have never been possible before. This was shown to a few directors such as the legendary Stanley Kubrick. The Steadicam was first used on the film Bound For Glory. However its most iconic use of it was for the film The Shining In the scene where we see a small boy riding a tricycle down a hallway. For this Stanley Kubrick, the director, wanted the camera to be almost on the ground. So they had to create a "Low Mode" where the camera can be lower to the ground. Today steadicams are still used in hollywood and have even been downsized for smaller cameras. Until 2012 they were the only technology that cinema had to stabilize handheld
