Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion (1878), and Primitive Motion Studies (from 1884-1887)

One of a number of early achievements that helped pave the way for animation was by Briton Eadweard Muybridge who famously photographed The Horse in Motion in 1878. In a series of pictures, he captured frame by frame, how a horse's four hoofs were actually off the ground at the same time. In other test footage, including The Human Figure in Motion - Descending Stairs and Turning Around, he photographed cinematic glimpses of naked men and women in motion, such as this female and male walking up and down stairs.

Monkeyshines No. 1 (1889 or 1890)

Thomas Edison's assistant William K.L. Dickson filmed his first experimental Kinetoscope trial film, Monkeyshines No. 1, the only surviving film from the cylinder kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the United States. It featured the fuzzy movements of laboratory assistant Sacco Albanese, filmed with a system using tiny images that rotated around the cylinder.

Dickson Greeting (1891)

The first public demonstration of motion pictures in the US using the Kinetoscope occurred at the Edison Laboratories to the Federation of Women’s Clubs on May 20, 1891. The very short film’s subject in the test footage was William K.L. Dickson himself, bowing, smiling and ceremoniously taking off his hat.

Fred Ott's Sneeze (1894) aka Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze

One of Thomas Edison's first film strips on celluloid, filmed to be viewed on his invention called the kinetoscope, a device for viewing moving pictures without sound, and patented in 1887. It remains as one of the earliest surviving copyrighted motion pictures (or "flicker"), lasting a duration of five seconds and filmed at sixteen frames per second (80 frames), composed of an optical record of Fred Ott, an Edison employee, sneezing comically for the camera. In a few short years, Edison was producing between 200 and 300 films at the Black Maria, the first movie studio established in 1893.

Annabelle (Whitford) Moore's Dance Routines (mid 1890s)

Many of the earliest nickelodeon films featured the dancing of vaudeville performer Annabelle Whitford (known as Peerless Annabelle) Moore, whose routines were filmed at Edison's studio in NJ - Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894), Annabelle Sun Dance (1894), Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) - the first publically-released color film (pictured) - hand-tinted, Serpentine Dance by Annabelle (1896), Annabelle in Flag Dance (1896), Skirt Dance by Annabelle (1896), Tambourine Dance by Annabelle (1896), Sun Dance - Annabelle (1897), etc.; male audiences were enthralled watching these early depictions of a clothed female dancer (sometimes color-tinted) on a Kinetoscope - an early peep-show device for projecting short films.

Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1895)

The first known (and only surviving) film with live-recorded sound made to test Edison's Kinetophone (with a cylinder-playing phonograph and connected earphone tubes) was this 17-second short film. It was noted as the first film combining both sound and motion. The projector was connected to the phonograph with a pulley system, but it didn't work very well and was difficult to synchronize. It was formally introduced in 1895, but soon proved to be unsuccessful since competitive, better synchronized devices were also beginning to appear at the time.

The Enchanted Drawing (1900)

James Stuart Blackton produced this Vitagraph Studios short film that featured a drawn character and some objects. This was an early prototype of animation, although the sequence was not composed of continuous frame-by-frame filming. It showed a cartoonist (Blackton himself) drawing a round cartoon face on a large stand-up easel. He then drew a bottle of wine and a glass in the upper-right hand corner of the page - and then removed the two items from the paper, holding them up as real objects and pouring himself a glass of wine. He then placed the mouth of the wine bottle in the cartoon-man's mouth, causing a smile as he gave him a drink. The cartoonist then drew the man's hat - and again reached into the picture to borrow the hat and place it on his own head. He also borrowed the man's cigar, causing a frown. At the conclusion of the short segment, he then restored all the elements back into the picture.

A Railway Collision (1900)

Director R. W. Booth and producer Robert W. Paul (Paul's Animatograph Works) made this short 22-second film - one of the earliest attempts to realistically re-create a large-scale railroad disaster by using miniature scale models; the film depicted two trains speeding toward each other on the same track, and colliding on the embankment.