Charles Émile Reynaud... =)

Charles Émile Reynaud (8th December 1844 - 9th January 1918) was a French science teacher who created the first projected animated cartoon films. In 1877 he created the praxinoscope and in 1888 the Théâtre Optique. On the 28th of October 1892, he projected the first animated film in public.

The praxinoscope was the successor to the zoetrope, similar to this it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope was considered an improvement on the zoetrope due to the fact that instead of the narrow viewing slits of the zoetrope, it had a circle of mirrors placed on the inside of the cylinder so that the reflection of the images appeared stationary in position as the wheel turned. The user would look into the mirrors and see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of movement with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope. The Théâtre Optique was an improved version of the praxinoscope, with capabilities of projecting images onto a screen with more pictures, enabling him to show hand-drawn animated cartoons to a large audience.