<P> The term "stop motion", related to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen, "stop - motion". Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in addition, a second meaning, not related to animation or cinema: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition). </P> <P> Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse technique, where still photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals and combined into a continuous film . Time lapse is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence . When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster . </P> <P> Stop motion animation has a long history in film . It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic . The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for Vitagraph's The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1897), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life . In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop trick technique in the "lightning sculpting" sequence . French trick film maestro Georges Méliès used stop motion animation once to produce moving title - card letters in one of his short films, and a number of his special effects are based on stop motion photography . In 1907, The Haunted Hotel is a new stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton, and was a resounding success when released . Segundo de Chomón (1871--1929), from Spain, released El Hotel Eléctrico later that same year, and used similar techniques as the Blackton film . In 1908, A Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptor's Nightmare, a film by Billy Bitzer . Italian animator Roméo Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour - de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in 1912 . The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892--1965), who animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles (1910), The Ant and the Grasshopper (1911). </P> <P> One of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which impressed audiences in 1912 . December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins' 54 episodes of "Miracles in Mud" to the big screen . Also in December 1916, the first woman animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay stop motion . She would release her first film in 1917, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . </P>

When was the first stop motion animation made