Pleograph

Pleograph (in Polish: Pleograf) has been one of the first movie cameras constructed in 1894, thus before the Lumière brothers, by Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński, who later went to construct the first hand held camera called Aeroscope.

Similarly to the Lumière brothers cinematograph, Prószyński's pleograph has been also a projector. The apparatus used a rectangle of celluloid with perforation between several parallel rows of images. Using pleograph Prószyński shot first short films showing scenes from the life of Warsaw like people skating on in the park ("Ślizgawka w ogrodzie"). The name camera in its Polish spelling - Pleograf has been taken by the first Polish film studio established in Warsaw in 1901.