Walt Disney in the Year 55 BC

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"...it is not surprising that images should move, and agitate their arms and other members, with regularity; for it happens that many an image seems to do this in our sleep.  This is to be explained in the following way; that when the first image passes off, and a second is afterward produced in another position, the former then seems to have changed its gesture.  This, doubtless, we must conceive to be done by a very rapid process..."

-- Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe, (DE RERUM NATURA) Book IV, circa 55 BC, trans. Rev. John Selby Watson, M.A. 1851

The poet Titus Lucretius Carus was speaking of the images of things that form in the mind, but his insight would certainly be a starting point for the technology of cartoon animation, and indeed even of motion pictures and television.
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