ocr: Silver Shadows Monthly: AJournal of Motion Pictures History of Motion Pictures. (Part 1) During the 19th century, Peter Roget and others made an interesting discovery: the human eye continues to - see an object a split second after it has disappeared. This came to be called Persistence ofVision. This principle was further proven when early inventors developed primitive machines that enabled people to see a quick succession of still photographs. The photos, showing minute stages of the movement of some subject (such as a person sneezing!), gave viewers the perception that they were seeing actua ...