History

The first animated projection (screening) was created in France, by Charles-Émile Reynaud, who was a French science teacher. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888. On 28 October 1892, he projected the first animation in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. His films were not photographed, but drawn directly onto the transparent strip. In 1900, more than 500,000 people had attended these screenings.
The first (photographed) animated projection was "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" (1906) by newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton, one of the co-founders of the Vitagraph Company arrived. In the movie, a cartoonist's line drawings of two faces were 'animated' (or came to life) on a blackboard. The two faces smiled and winked, and the cigar-smoking man blew smoke in the lady's face; also, a circus clown led a small dog to jump through a hoop.
The first animated projection in the traditional sense (i.e., on motion picture film) was "Fantasmagorie" by the French director Émile Cohl in 1908. This was followed by two more films, "Le Cauchemar du fantoche" ["The Puppet's Nightmare", now lost] and "Un Drame chez les fantoches" ["A Puppet Drama", called "The Love Affair in Toyland" for American release and "Mystical Love-Making" for British release], all completed in 1908.
One of the very first successful animated cartoons was Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) by Winsor McCay. It is considered the first example of true character animation. At first, animated cartoons were black-and-white and silent. Felix the Cat and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit are notable examples.

"Golden Age"

From the 1930s to 1960s, theatrical cartoons were produced in huge numbers, and usually shown before a feature film in a movie theater. Disney, Fleischer, Warner Bros., and MGM were the largest studios producing these 5 to 10-minute "shorts".
The first cartoon to use a soundtrack was in 1926 with Max Fleischer's My Old Kentucky Home. However the Fleischers used a De Forest sound system and the sound was not completely synchronized with the film. Walt Disney's 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie starring Mickey Mouse was the first to use a click track during the recording session, which produced better synchronism. "Mickey Mousing" became a term for any movie action (animated or live action) that was perfectly synchronized with music. The music used is original most of the time, but musical q