Asakura Matsugoro returns to Japan, from studying optics in Austria, in 1875 and starts to build a lens factory with government approval, but passes away before its completion.

Émile Reynaud invents the Praxinoscope.

In Japan, students of Asakura Matsugoro complete the lens factory and start to produce ophthalmic lenses with imported glass. Glass melting technology still had not developed in Japan.

Japanese company Konishi-ya (early Konica) moves to Honcho in 1876 and changes it's name to Konishi Honten.

In Japan, Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz acquires the stock and studio of Felice Beato.

Eadweard Muybridge experiments with multiple cameras to take successive photographs of horses in motion. He continued his photographic studies of motion, including human movements, from 1884-1887 at the University of Pennsylvania.

George Eastman begins to take an interest in photography and takes lessons from George Monroe, a local photographer, for $5 to learn the process. He purchases his first photographic outfit for $49.

Karl Klic invented the most precise and commercially successful method of photogravure printing.

George Eastman begins to simplify the complicated wet plate process.

George Eastman invents an emulsion-coating machine which enables the mass-production of photographic dry plates.

Dennis Redmond develops the electric telescope to produce moving images.

Muybridge demonstrates to an audience at the San Francisco Art Association Rooms his Zoopraxiscope, a Zoetrope adapted to project photographic images in motion.

George Eastman begins to commercially manufacture dry plates.

Stephen Horgan's A Scene in Shantytown is printed in 'halftone' in the New York Daily Graphic.

First book about television, The Electric Telescope, is published.

The Eastman Dry Plate Company is founded.

French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey invents the chronophotographic gun, a camera shaped like a rifle that records twelve successive photographs per second.

George Eastman begins experimenting with different emulsion support bases other than glass. With William Walker, a research person at Eastman's company, they devise a roll film holder, a flexible film and a machine to produce the film.

The first dry plates were imported into Japan. The dry-plate process greatly promotes the development of photography in Japan.

Asakura Matsugoro's son, Asakura Kametaro, developes a photographic lens at his factory in Yotsuya Denmacho and then displays the lens at the 3rd National Industrial Exhibition in 1890 where it wins 1st prize. This is the first photographic lens produced in Japan, except for simple single-element lenses.

The Stebbing Automatic Camera, the first production camera to use roll film, is introduced.

Ottomar Anschutz's Stork's in Flight captures multiple images.

Eastman American Film is introduced as the first transparent film negative.

In Japan, Ogawa Isshin (Kazumasa) opens a photo studio in Tokyo after studying dry plate production in the U.S. Dry plates are imported and photography in Japan spreads dramatically.

The Empress wears Western-style robe in public for the first time, setting an example for Japanese women.

Thomas Alva Edison commissions W. K. L. Dickson to invent a motion picture camera.

The 10,000th microscope is produced at Ernst Leitz's optical company, the number of employees is approximately 120.

First motion picture films are made on sensitized paper rolls taken with a camera by Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince.

The name Kodak is born and the easy to use KODAK Camera is placed on the market. It is loaded with 100 exposures on a film roll for $25. The camera and film is sent back to Kodak for developing. Featured a fixed focus, 57mm, f/9 lens.

The Kodak #2 is introduced. It takes round photographs.

The first commercial transparent roll film, perfected by Eastman and his research chemist, is marketed. The availability of this flexible film makes possible the development of Thomas Edison's motion picture camera in 1891. The Eastman Company is formed.

Peter Henry Emerson's Naturalistic Photography handbook outlines aesthetics, which he calls naturalism.

Charles Driffield and Ferdinand Hurter publish their work on emulsion sensitivity and exposure measurement.

Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives. Realistic photographs of New York City living conditions prompts revision of tenement housing laws.

Nadar, a famous Parisian photographer, makes several studio portraits of George Eastman.

Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT).

Dickson's kinetophone synchronizes the kinetograph and the phonograph.

British photographer Frederick Henry Evans becomes known for artistic photography. He is part of the group known as the Linked Ring.

W. K. L. Dickson and Thomas A. Edison patent the Kinetoscope, a type of viewing device in which a film loop ran on spools between an incandescent lamp and a shutter for individual viewing.

Daylight loading film is introduced.

The company becomes Eastman Kodak Company of New York.

Frederick Ives develops first complete system for natural color photography.

Fred Ott sneezing in Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894, filmed at the "Black Maria," a motion picture studio that rotates on tracks to follow the light of the sun built by Edison in West Orange, NJ.

Thomas Alva Edison commissions W.K.L.Dickson to invent a motion-picture camera in 1887. Dickson's contribution to motion-picture and projection technology was a device to ensure intermittent but regular motion of the film strip. Kinetograph patent, 1893.

Photo Club of Paris is established.

Louis and Auguste Lumière invent the Cinématographe in Lyon, France, a combination camera-projector that can project moving images onto a screen.

First advertised public screening of films at LeGrand Café, Paris. The Lumière brothers' Arrival of a Train at a Station, one of the many actuality films or documentary views they made is screened.

The Pocket KODAK Camera is introduced.

Auguste and Louis Lumière's Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory.

Eugene Atget begins to photograph Paris.

The birth of cinema: In Berlin, Max and Emil Skladanowsky show a 15-minute public program of films made using their Bioscop.

The Lumières and Edison demonstrate motion picture cameras and projectors.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers x-rays.

Public demonstration in New York City of the Edison Vitascope designed by Thomas Armat, bringing projection to the United States.

Founding of Gaumont, oldest extant film company.

Britain's first projector, the Theatrograph (later the Animatograph) is demonstrated by Robert W. Paul.

Edison's John Rice-May Irwin Kiss (peep show epic showing a prolonged kiss).

Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta publish stereoscopic Röntgen photographs

British photographers George Albert Smith and James Williamson construct their own motion picture cameras and begin production of trick films.

125 people, most of them from the upper classes, die during a film screening at the Charity Bazaar in Paris after a curtain is ignited by the ether used to fuel the projector lamp.

Herman Casler and W.K.L. Dickson's American Mutoscope is the most popular film company in the United States.

Pascal - First roll film spring wind motor advance.

Founding of Pathé-Frères, the world's largest film producer and distributor through WW I.