A closer look
Before Disney monopolized childhoods, Charles-Émile Reynaud was hand-painting hundreds of frames on gelatin squares for his Théâtre Optique in 1892. This absolute madman pioneered synchronized sound and projected animation years before the Lumière brothers showed up with their moving trains. But because human attention spans are fickle, the public ultimately abandoned him for the novelty of standard cinema. Bankrupt and bitter, Reynaud smashed his groundbreaking machine with a hammer and chucked the pieces, along with most of his masterworks, straight into the Seine.
