Nearly a century before James Cameron transformed 5′ 7″ Zoe Saldaña into the nine-foot-tall Neytiri in Avatar, cartoonist Max Fleischer pioneered the first motion capture device in his Brooklyn living room.

Consisting of a projector mounted behind a transparent easel, the rotoscope machine transformed the art of animation by allowing cartoon artists to trace the movement of live performers onto animation cells. The result: fluid, lifelike motion.