Eadweard Muybridge’s groundbreaking motion photography was accomplished using multiple cameras and assembling the individual pictures into a motion picture. Muybridge was commissioned by Leland Stanford (California governor/ Stanford University) to scientifically answer a popularly debated question during this era – are all four of a horse’s hooves ever off the ground at the same time while the horse is galloping? Muybridge’s time-motion photography proved they indeed were, and the idea of motion photography was born.

First Home Movie Ever Made – Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)
Early movie history is surrounded in the mists of time, as different competitors developed movie technology simultaneously. However, the Roundhay Garden Scene is thought to be the oldest surviving film on record.
The Roundhay Garden Scene was directed by the French inventor, Louis Le Prince and features some members of Le Prince’s family playfully walking around a garden. The film lasts about two seconds.

First Movie Ever Shot (U.S.A.) – Monkeyshines No. 1 (1889 or 1890)
Monkeyshines, No. 1 may very well be the first movie ever shot using a continuous strip of film. It was shot as a camera test by W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise, both of whom worked for Thomas Edison. Historians are unsure of the exact date this film was shot as it was filmed to be a camera test and not for commercial purposes.
The film depicts a blurry Edison co-worker goofing off for the camera. It was quickly followed by Monkeyshines No. 2 and 3.

The First Copyrighted Movie Ever Made – Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1893-4)
This title goes to Fred Ott’s Sneeze, which reportedly was the first movie ever made at Thomas Edison’s Black Maria rooftop studio. The actual name of this movie is Record of a Sneeze, which was made in late 1893 and copyrighted on January 7, 1894.
This movie was made for the Kinetoscope and not intended to be projected.

First Movie Ever Made for Projection — Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)
Movies for mass public consumption are considered to be the invention of Auguste and Louis Lumiere. Edison’s interest in movies was to sell his Kinetoscope machines, designed as individual ‘peep shows” in which a person looked into a box and saw a moving picture. The Lumiere brothers envisioned movies as public showings. The two approaches are like the difference between listening to an I-pod on your headphones versus sitting in a theater and listening to a concert.
The Lumiere Brothers held a private screening of projected movies on March 22, 1895. This test screening was a success. The Lumiere’s then held their first paid, public screening of movies on December 28, 1895 in the basement the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. The basement was set up with a hundred seats. Thirty-three people paid attendance to witness the birth of cinema.
The program that night consisted of ten Lumiere shorts, each running approximately 46 seconds in length.
To watch the program of ten shorts shown that historic night, click HERE. (Please Note: this site is in French.) You will need Quicktime to watch this collection of short movies.
To watch the first short, Workers Leaving the Lumiere factory, click HERE.
While historians consider the Lumiere screening to be the first demonstration of movies as a commercial medium, they do so because of the projection system used by the Lumiere brothers. Almost two months earlier, two other brothers showed moving pictures to a paying audience using a different technology.

First Motion Picture Projected for an Audience – Berlin Wintergarten Novelty Program (1895)
Max and Emil Sklandanowsky were German inventors who created the Bioskop, a different technology for showing moving pictures that involved an elaborate machine using two parallel film strips and two lenses which were able to flash pictures on a screen at 16 frames per second. This was enough of a frame rate to give the illusion of motion. On November 1, 1895, nearly two months before the Lumiere public showing, the Sklandanowsky brothers presented a moving picture show as part of the Berlin WIntergarten festival as part of a program of novelties. The moving pictures were a big hit and played to sold out shows in the ensuing weeks; however, the Lumiere projection system was technologically superior to the complicated arrangements necessary to show Bioskop pictures, which is why the Lumiere’s are generally credited with the creation of the commercial medium we call movies.
Conclusion
So what was the first movie ever made? That’s really up to you and how you define what a movie is.