An apparatus in which a series of views representing closely successive phases of a moving object are exhibited in rapid sequence, giving a picture which, owing to persistence of vision, appears to the observer to be continuous motion.  It is a development of the zoetrope or 'wheel of life' described by W. G. Horner about 1833, a cylinder rotating on a vertical axis with slots through which one sees a succession of pictures.  E. Muybridge about 1877 obtained successive pictures of a running horse by employing a row of cameras, the shutters of which were opened and closed electrically by the passage of the horse in front of them.

The modern cinematograph was rendered possible by the invention of celluloid film on which the serial pictures are impressed by instantaneous photography, a long sensitized film being moved across the focal plane of a camera and exposed intermittently. 16 to fifty pictures may be taken per second. The films are developed on large drums, within which a ruby electric light may be fixed to enable the process to be watched. A positive is made from the negative and is passed through an optical lantern , the images being thus successively projected over a distance onto a screen.  The Cinematograph enables living or animated pictures of such subjects as armies at march or an express train at full speed to be presented with marvelous distinctness and detail. Machines of this kind have been devised in enormous numbers for the purposes of amusement under the names of bioscope, biograph, kinetoscope, mutograph,etc, formed chiefly from the Latin words for light and movement.