The history of American film dates back to the very first days of the cinema, and its film industry has produced many of the major contributions to movie history. In 1878, Leland Stanford, the former Governor of California, enlisted the aid of English landscape photographer Eadweard Muybridge to settle a bet over whether all four of a horse’s hooves simultaneously left the ground when it was galloping. Muybridge settled the bet by lining twelve cameras along each side of a race track and stretching string across the track so that when the horse broke the string he triggered the camera's shutters. When the resulting images were played on a zoetrope, they presented the viewer with the illusion of movement. (please visit The Movies: Brainchild of a Killer for a more detailed account). It would be seventeen years before cinema in the form we recognise it today would finally emerge, and the intervening years would be filled with a fascinating cast of characters from both sides of the Atlantic all racing against time to be the first to bring the moving image to the screen.

From such apparently unconnected and insignificant developments did a multi-billion dollar industry develop which has been fearless in its determination to embrace perpetually-evolving media technologies. The American film industry, based primarily in Hollywood, was the first to bring talking pictures, stereoscopic sound, 3D movies, drive-ins and, ahem, smell-o-vision to the world and continues to spearhead the quest for new breakthroughs in screen technology.

The history of American film is filled with fascinating stories, both famous and obscure, about its movies and the people who made them, and it is Movie Movie’s mission to bring them to you in as much accurate detail as possible. By clicking on any of the links below you will find summaries of the significant events and incidents that occurred in that particular year or period, and a growing number of in-depth articles giving detailed accounts of the key moments in the history of American film, and its personalities, both past and present.