On this day in 1908, Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie was released, considered to be the first ever animated cartoon. It is one of the earliest examples of hand-drawn animation, and considered by many film historians to be the very first animated cartoon. Despite appearances the animation is not created on a blackboard but rather on paper, the blackboard effect achieved by shooting each of the 700 drawings onto negative film. The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph”, a mid 19th-century variant