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1882 Etienne Jules Marey in France developed a chronophotographic camera, shaped like a gun and referred to as a "shotgun" camera, that could take twelve successive pictures or images per second.

1886 Pioneering British inventor William Friese-Greene collaborated with John Rudge to make an enhanced magic lantern, one of the earliest motion picture cameras and projectors, termed a Biophantascope, to project photographic plates in rapid succession. He claimed to have sent Thomas Edison (who denied receiving anything) details of his camera designs, but received no replies.

In 1890, Friese-Greene received a patent for his 'chronophotographic' camera, capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film, but his experiments met with limited success, unlike Edison. However, he became the first man to ever witness moving pictures on a screen.

1887 Nitrate celluloid film (a chemical combination of gun cotton and gum camphor) was invented by American clergyman Hannibal W. Goodwin.

1888 Edison filed his first caveat (a Patent Office document) in which he declared his work on future inventions, anticipating filling out a complete patent application for his Kinetoscope and Kinetograph (a motion picture camera).

1888 French inventor Louis Augustin Le Prince developed a single-lens camera which he used to make the very first moving picture sequences (of traffic on a Leeds, England bridge), by moving the film through a camera's sprocket wheels by grabbing the film's perforations. Presumably, it was the first movie ever shot and then shown to the public.

1889 Henry Reichenbach developed (and patented) durable and flexible celluloid film strips (or roll film) to be manufactured by the pioneer of photographic equipment, George Eastman, and his Eastman Company

1930 British director Alfred Hitchcock's second all-talkie thriller Murder was the first film in which a character's (Sir John Menier, played by Herbert Marshall) thoughts were heard in voice-over.

1930 Public pressure (mainly from the Catholic Church) applied further censorship guidelines and clearly outlined what was acceptable (and unacceptable) in films within the industry. Pre-marital sex, alcoholism, immoral and criminal activity, among other subjects, led to the establishment and adoption of the Motion Picture Production Code. As head of the MPPDA, William Hays established this new code of decency, known in short as the Production Code or Hays Code.

1932 The film career of 4 year-old child star Shirley Temple (born in 1928), probably the most famous child actress in history, began when she appeared in various shorts (such as the 'Baby Burlesks' series with her first film War Babies (1932)) and in her feature film debut, The Red-Haired Alibi (1932). Fox signed five-year old Shirley to a contract in 1933. She would become one of the biggest box-office stars in the mid to late 1930s (1936-1938).

1933 One of the first feature-length musical scores written specifically for a US 'talkie' film was Max Steiner's score for RKO's King Kong. It was the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, recorded using a 46-piece orchestra. After the score was completed, all of the film's sounds were recorded onto three separate tracks, one each for sound effects, dialogue and music. For the first time in film history, RKO's sound department head Murray Spivak made a groundbreaking sound design decision - he pitched the effects to match the score, so they wouldn't be overwhelming and so they would complement each other.

1934 Donald Duck debuted in The Wise Little Hen.

1934 The first use of 3-strip Technicolor in a live-action sequence (in the film's final scene), was in MGM's musical/romance operetta adaptation The Cat and the Fiddle, starring Jeanette MacDonald (in her MGM debut film) and Ramon Novarro.

1936 The Negro Improvement League protested The Green Pastures, the first all-black film since King Vidor's Hallelujah! (1929). It was a reenactment of Bible stories set in the world of black American folklore and filled with cliches and racial stereotypes of the time. The organization criticized it as "insulting, degrading and malicious" and perpetuating unacceptable stereotypes.

1937 The first full-length animated feature, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released - made for a budget of $1.5 million. It was the top moneymaker in 1938, when it made an astronomical $8 million.

1939 This year has often been called the "greatest year in film history" by film buffs, movie historians, and critics, chiefly due to the inordinate number of classic films. Some of the greatest films ever made were released in 1939, including Gone With the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz and Wuthering Heights. In France, both Marcel Carné's Daybreak (aka Le Jour Se Lève) and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (considered by some to be the greatest film of all-time, but banned during the German occupation) were released.

1940 Disney's groundbreaking Fantasia introduced a "Fantasound" 'stereo-like', multi-channel soundtrack (an optical 'surround-sound' soundtrack printed on a separate 35mm reel from the actual video portion of the film). It cost about four times more than an average live-action picture.

1940 Famed cartoon character Bugs Bunny first said his famous line ("Eh, what's up, Doc?" voiced by Mel Blanc) in his fourth, Oscar-nominated Tex Avery cartoon, A Wild Hare (1940) - the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon with Elmer Fudd as a rabbit hunter (and noted for Elmer's first use of his 'wabbit' voice). Bugs finally received his identifiable name by his fifth cartoon, Elmer's Pet Rabbit (1941). 1940 Tom & Jerry, created by Hanna & Barbera, were debuted by MGM in Puss Gets the Boot. (Tom was called Jasper and Jerry didn't have a name yet.)