The first motion picture production studio: Edison’s Black Maria

Yes, things like the zoopraxiscope by Muybridge (His motion studies are incredible), and other phenakistiscopes, long predate the traditional motion picture camera and are evidence of incredible inventiveness and a human search for motion by way of optical illusion.

Then you get people like Melies who just exploded what you could do with the camera and, in a certain fashion, invented a lot of the special effect techniques we know today through sheer playfulness and experimentation.

There was a lot of revisionist history out there that painted Edison as this great inventor, when in fact, he was just a businessman who knew how to exploit for profit. I lived in the town where he grew up after his family moved from Ohio, and they still laud him here, with zero mention in any of the many museums of the individuals whose ideas he piggybacked, borrowed, and sometimes downright stole. It's almost fitting that Port Huron idolizes such an individual, since the town itself is swathed in a veneer of supposed boot-strap success stories, when, in fact, both politically and socially, it is remarkably backwards and ersatz. Edison sold candy to train passengers, and learned very early how to make a buck. He was a hack, otherwise, stumbling his way through other people's ideas while putting on a show of being some kind of marvel. That's it. That sums up the man's entire history.

An example of Kodak mentality before Kodak even existed.