History

History 

The first attempts of moving images were the cave paintings of our guys back in the stone age, historians think that they used the flickering of camp fires to simulate the movement of their paintings. 

Later this advanced to full walk cycles that were found on Roman artifacts created in 400BC.
In the 1800s, Toys were made that featured spinning wheels with images that would flash and seem like something is moving.
Eadweard Muybridge photographed a horse running as an experiment and created a horsey run cycle.
Thomas Edison invented the kineoscope in 1888, where you can look into a box to see film moving.

In 1899 the first stop motion animation was made featuring matches, advertising donations that could be made to give soldiers supplies. This lead to the realisation that animation at its best features propaganda and/or advertisements.

Electric Hotel was made in 1908 featuring advanced stop motion, a brush moving on its own and cleaning shoes. 

Little Nemo 1911 is a good example of read deal animation, that uses a lot of the principles of movement we use now. The bit at the start where they're just stretching is odd, but the ending with the dragon is really quite nice, it really shows what could be done, even back then.