Joseph Plateau (October 14, 1801 – September 15, 1883) was a Belgian physicist. He was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistoscope
William George Horner (1786 – 22 September 1837) was a British mathematician and schoolmaster. The invention of the zoetrope, in 1834 and under a different name has been attributed to him
Charles Emile Reynaud (8 December 1844–9 January 1918) was a French science teacher, responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Theatre Optique in December 1888, and on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musee Grevin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used.
Eadweard J. Muybridge9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projectorit was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its componentsthe Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video
The lumiere brothers were the earlist film makers to date
George Pal  was a Hungarian-born American animar and film producer, principally associated with the science fictin genre. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe