21. Over in the far away land of Argentina, The first feature-length animated film, “El Apostol” is created in 1926.
22. Taking the paper cut out animation technique Emile Cohl started, Lotte Reiniger took it fifty intricate steps further. “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” is a a1926 German animated fairytale and the oldest surviving animated feature films. Lotte preceded Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks use of the multi-plane camera by nearly a decade.
23. Motion picture film is starting to get serious and is standardized at 24 frames per second in 1927.
24. The same year, Warner Brothers released “The Jazz Singer.” Film and sound begin their life together.
25. The MOUSE is introduced and voiced by Walt Disney in his debut “Plane Crazy”. America’s romance with Mickey Mouse begins.
26. Walt Disney is on a roll in 1928 after the birth of his creation, Mickey Mouse, the first cartoon with synchronized sound is released. Hello, “Steamboat Willy”!
27. Hopping on the bandwagon, Walter Lantz animates a short sequence for Universal’s “The King of Jazz.” It is the first animation to incorporate the two strip Technicolor process.
28. Remember Felix the Cat? The 1930’s brought a small revival using Felix as the star of some of the most famous photos of early TV equipment. NBC used a Felix toy on a rotating turntable to test broadcasts. Here comes the beginning of licensing characters.
29. Same year, Betty Boop made her first appearance in a cartoon called “Dizzy Dishes.” Created by prolific Max Fleischer, with his studio help produced it for release by Paramount Pictures.
30. We all remember Tom and Jerry from our childhoods, but you probably remember the cat and mouse. Tom and Jerry was first introduced in 1931 in a short film, “Wot a Night”. The series only lasted two years and presented Tom and Jerry as humans. Joseph Barbera and William Hanna would recreate the series in 1940 depicting them as the cat and mouse we all love today!
31. Back over in France, Berthold Bartosch creates the first animated film based in the serious subject matter of social issues. “L’Idee” (The Idea) was ambitious and highly creative rounding off at about 30 minutes in length. Composer of the film’s soundtrack, Arthur Honegger is expected to be the first to use an electronic instrument in a movie score.
32. Unable to sit still after the success of Mickey Mouse and Alice, Walt Disney creates the first cartoon made using three strip Technicolor, “Flowers and Trees” (1932).
33. The next year, Walt shows the world that almost identical looking characters can have completely different personalities through the cartoon performances in “Three Little Pigs”.
34. So far, we’ve only heard of one female making notches in the moments that shaped animation. In 1933, Max Fleixcher promotes Lillian Friedman which means she is the first woman animator in a U.S. Animation studio.
35. Nearly a decade after Lotte Reiniger uses a multi-plane camera technique, Ub Iwerks creates one using it as not a way of moving several layers of cutouts, but layering cels giving the final animated picture a truly three dimensional look.
36. In partnership with the GPO Film Unit (British General Post Office), Len Lye creates “A Colour Box” and “Kaleidoscope” which are known as the oldest existing film of someone hand-painting directly onto film stock. Originally used to create advertisement for “cheaper parcel post”, a panel of animation experts at the 2005 Annecy film festival listed “A Colour Box” as one of the top 10 most significant works in the history of Animation.
37. Mickey Mouse, the Alice shorts, the sound cartoons, and experiments with Technicolor processes seem like the simple training ground that all comes up to this moment. When 1937 rolls around, what everyone was predicting to be “Disney’s Follie” is released. To everyone’s surprise, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is a hit! In full color! With full synchronized sound! It is the first animated full-length film in America.
38. Walt Disney, forever an experimenting dreamer, introduces Fantasound which is a multi-channel stereo sound system. Only 6 theatres were equipped to play this special process that accompanied the release of “Fantasia”. It was one of the first films with a stereo soundtrack.
39. The year unknown, but somewhere between 1940 and 1949, a man named Jay Forrester at MIT came to the conclusion that a “Computer” would be the best way for problem solving of training pilots and testing aerodynamics of aircrafts. Only one issue… What is a computer?
40. Little less than a decade after Sullivan’s death, Otto Messmer revives Felix, yet again, and animates the world first TV commercials which were Botany Tie ads and weather reports. NBC-TV in New York went commercial in 1941 and the commercials were shown until 1949.