Charles-Emile Reynaud

Charles-Émile Reynaud (1844 to 1918) was a French inventor who built early animation devices and showed the first projected animated films. Born in Montreuil, he came from a family with an engineering background, since his father Brutus was an engineer, and he was building steam engines by the age of thirteen before working as a photographer, a lecturer's assistant and a teacher. In 1877 he patented the praxinoscope, an animation device that improved on the zoetrope and sold well enough for him to leave teaching. His Théâtre Optique, patented in 1888, was the first known use of film perforations, and its Pantomimes Lumineuses opened at the Musée Grévin in Paris on 28 October 1892, before the Lumière brothers' first paid screening of December 1895. His photo-scénographe of 1895 was overshadowed by the cinematograph.