Anybody who has watched the 2012 film Hugo already knows about the pioneering advances of Louis Lumiere. Starting in the still photo business, Louis, along with his brother Auguste, focused on making moving pictures better and more easily accessible. They created the first perforated film, which allowed it to more easily move through projectors. And although there is much debate on whether they should be credited with it, they did patent the first cinematographie, combining the inventions of the camera, the film processor and the projector into one device.

On this day, February 13, in 1895, Louis Lumiere patented his cinematograph machine. It was the first device of its kind to be granted a patent, but hardly the first one built. The Americans would clam that honor for Edison, but it was a Frenchman, Louis Le Prince, who was likely the first to record images on moving film.

Le Prince had patented a method for creating the illusion of movement in pictures by taking it with multiple lenses. But as the method was cumbersome at best, he invented a method for moving film that could record multiple images through the camera. His first attempts at just letting the film press through blurred out the image, since it was never still, and Le Prince realized he needed a way to allow the film to stop briefly, to allow the light to hit it at the proper angles. But he never got to showcase his invention: in 1890 he mysteriously disappeared without his luggage from a train on the way to Paris.