The appearance of the film at the end of the nineteenth century was the result of a series of experiments. It was the result of technological evolution. It sounds strange today, but its greatest value lay perhaps in the fact that, as a result of technology, it also contributed greatly to the development of that very same technology. Muybridge, for instance, used a series of locomotion photographs to prove to his friends that there was an instant when a galloping horse had all four hooves in the air. In other words, film as a medium offered people a new vision of reality. On the other hand, its power to register fascinated the viewers who, for the first time saw places which most of them never would have otherwise seen. For very little money people could go to the cinema and see Chinese people in rice fields, Bedouins in Africa or witness the building of great dams or skyscrapers in New York.