Crash Course Film History: Key Concepts and Inventions in Early Cinema

Film

An expression of art, ideas, human nature, and politics; a series of moving images shown on a screen to tell a story, or a thin chemical strip used in cameras to capture photographs.

Persistence of vision

An optical illusion where the human eye and brain briefly hold an image for a fraction of a second—about 1/16th to 1/30th of a second—after the light source has gone.

Phi phenomenon

An optical illusion where the brain perceives continuous motion between stationary objects that blink on and off in a rapid sequence.

Zoetrope

An early mechanical animation device that creates the optical illusion of motion from a sequence of still drawings or objects.

Camera obscura

A darkened room or box with a small hole or lens on one side that projects an upside-down and reversed image of the outside scene onto the opposite interior wall.

Daguerreotype

The first publicly available and widely used photographic process, invented by Louis Daguerre in 1839.

Motion study

A specialized recording technique created by industrial efficiency pioneers Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in the early 20th century, using motion picture cameras to film workers and analyze their movements frame by frame.

Chronophotographic gun

An early ancestor of the movie camera, shaped like a rifle, that could capture 12 consecutive frames per second on a single rotating plate.

Zoopraxiscope

An early motion-picture projector invented by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879 to project sequential photographs in rapid succession, creating the illusion of moving images.

Kinetograph

The world's first functional motion-picture camera.

Celluloid Filmstrips

A flexible, transparent plastic base coated with a light-sensitive emulsion that revolutionized photography and motion pictures.

Kinetoscope

An early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window.

Maltese Cross

A mechanical gear system used in classic movie projectors and cameras to stop and advance film frame by frame.

Cinématographe

An early 19th-century lightweight, hand-cranked motion-picture device that functioned as a camera, a film printer, and a projector all in one.

Latham Loop

A mechanical innovation in film cameras and projectors that isolates the filmstrip from tension and vibration, allowing movies to be shot and projected continuously for long periods.

Vitascope

An early motion-picture projector co-invented by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and famously marketed and manufactured under the name of Thomas Edison.