One of the First Movies Ever Made was of a Horse

Muybridge’s ‘The Horse in Motion’

Have you watched Jordan Peele's movie, Nope? 

If you haven't, early on, one of the characters talks about how the first movie ever made was of a horse being ridden by a jockey and reveals that her family of horse wranglers descended from that same jockey. It's not only a cool scene, but it's rooted in a true story.

In 1878, English photographer Eadweard Muybridge set up a series of cameras along a racetrack in California to capture horses in motion. Each camera shutter was triggered by a tripwire, snapping successive sequential photographs of galloping horses in full stride. The result was a groundbreaking series of cabinet cards titled The Horse in Motion, with each card showing a different horse in multiple stages of movement. One of these, Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, became especially famous—and is now widely considered the first movie, or at least the first visual sequence to simulate motion from still images.

Muybridge's work was a radical experiment in time and perception. His sequential photos became an early form of photography, the science of capturing motion through multiple images over time. Viewed in rapid succession, the frames trick the eye into seeing continuous movement, laying the visual foundation for how film would eventually work. Though they were still photographs, together they acted as a reel—before reels even existed.

Muybridge’s 1887 book Animals in Motion

In 1879, Muybridge took things further by inventing the Zoopraxiscope, a device that projected these sequences onto a wall or screen. It used a spinning glass disc to animate the images, essentially creating one of the world’s first motion picture projectors. Muybridge toured with it, giving public lectures where the everyday man could see animals that seem to gallop, leap, and run across the screen in what looked like magic. His invention predated the commercial motion picture camera by more than a decade.

Of course, the history of the film is more complicated than a single moment. 

Some historians argue that while Muybridge’s contributions were vital, they didn’t directly lead to the development of cinema as we know it. Others point to innovators like Étienne-Jules Marey, the Lumière brothers, or Thomas Edison. But even if his work wasn’t the first movie in the modern sense, it’s still a vital piece of film history, proving that the idea of capturing movement captivated human curiosity long before the big screen.