On this day in 1914, John Randolph was granted the patent for Process of and Article for Producing Moving Pictures. U.S. Patent No. 1,107,193.
By means of this invention it is able to produce on a commercially practical scale a kind of moving pictures which may be designated as animated cartoons to distinguish them from the ordinary moving pictures. In the usual method, the object photographed is in motion and the exposures are made on the film or other sensitized surface with such rapidity that each successive picture shows the object in a slightly advanced position form that which it occupied in the last proceeding picture. As a part of the improved process the photograph is not taken in motion but photograph in succession a series of pictures or drawings which show the object, the successive pictures illustrating the successive positions which the object would take if it were in motion. By rapidly projecting on a screen the photographs of these drawings, the persons, animals, or other objects appear to move in the same manner as they do in the ordinary moving pictures. These animated cartoons differ from the ordinary moving pictures, in that as the drawings may be made from imagination rather than from life, the persons, animals, inanimate objects or the like, may be represented as performing acts as assuming positions and expressions which would be impossible in reality and which may be made extremely amusing and entertaining.
