As you know, film is made up of a series of still photographs put together to achieve what we refer to as Motion picture. These images are captured at a rate of 24 frames (or pictures) per second for normal speed motion. We can always create slow motion or fastmotion by altering the frame rate. For slow motion, we must capture fewer frames per second to make it seem as though the picture is moving at a slower rate. For example, if you want the image to seem half as fast, we drop the frame rate to 12fps (frames per second). This works inversely for fast motion. If we want to speed up the images, we must capture a greater number of images in the same amount of time. Hence, setting the frame rate to 48fps will give the illusion that the picture is moving twice a fast. The idea of "frame rate" is simply the number of still images that flash before our eyes each second, effecting our perception of speed.
Series photography came about in 1872 when a man named Eadweard Muybridge was hired by Leland Standford, a former California governor and wealthy businessman, to settle a bet that at some point in it's gallop, a racehorse will have all four legs off the ground. Muybridge placed 12 cameras along a racetrack with wires from each camera streched across the track. As the horse raced down the track, its hooves tripped each camera, capturing the stages of motion of its gallop. He demonstrated his results on a mechanism called the zoopraxiscope, which can only be described as an ancient form of a slide projector. Muybridge was able to prove that all four of the horses hooves, at some point during its gallop, do in fact leave the ground. He recorded live action continuously for the first time in history, but he did so with twelve or more cameras, and it was only when these separate functions could be incorporated into a single device that motion picture would truly be born.
It was French psysiologist Etienne-Jules Marey who recorded the first series photographs of live action in a single portable camera. It was technical breakthroughs of both Muybridge and Marey which enabled the Edison Laboratories in Ney Jersey to invent the Kinetograph, the first true motion picture camera.
From this point, the motion picture camera has gone through many different changes and modifications, but still follows the same structure as was defined by these forefathers of motion picture.