One of the first special effects used in motion pictures
was discovered by accident. While filming in the streets
of Paris in 1896, Georges Méliès’s camera stopped and
started again. When he viewed the film later, he found
that the “stop trick” had caused a bus to turn into a
carriage and pedestrians to disappear or change into different people. Because the film sequence had been interrupted, the picture seemed to mysteriously change before his eyes. Since then, filmmakers have used tricks like this to make people see things that didn’t happen in real life.