An animated film by French caricaturist, cartoonist and animator Émile Cohl. 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 of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images on to surrounding walls.
Even earlier examples animation’ish tech that predates film would be the Magic lantern in 1603, Phenakistiscope in 1831 and Zoetrope in 1834. Though all of them where limited to a couple of dozen frames at best.
Wonder if it would have been possible to have invented longer animation before film, having a long strip of frames mass produced by a printing press might have been possible, but probably not very economical. Good animation without having film as reference might also have been difficult, e.g. Muybridge’s first film was done to figure out if a horse would have all it’s legs of the ground in a gallop, an action a little to quick to clearly see with the human eye when in motion.