The process of getting from the early "magic lantern" inventions to the modern motion picture industry has involved a multitude of incremental steps taken to advance both the technology of film and the economic structure that supports the creation, distribution, and exhibition of films. Specific important inventions include the lightbulb, photography, flexible film, the motion picture camera, and the film projector.

Early Photography

Joseph Niépce, Louis Daguerre, and William Henry Fox Talbot are the three major inventors who worked to develop the techniques of photography during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Niépce and Daguerre eventually became partners in France and worked to refine the techniques of photography that are the predecessors of modern instant photography. Talbot, an Englishman who was not aware of the work of Niépce and Daguerre, discovered a method of photography that enabled the...