Thomas Edison took too much credit for creating the cinema. He originally was only interested in the cinema for a visual accompaniment for his very popular phonograph. His assistant Laurie Dickson was actually the one who developed the first working camera and was seen on the first "film" (which is him sneezing). The Lumiere Brothers showed their first film in 1895 which is largely celebrated as the first film ever shown. The cinema, like everything else was invented by a series of steps, most of the people not knowing what they were contributing too. Inventions like the zoetrope, the chriniphotographic gun, the kinetiscope all led to the "invention" on cinema. Cinema is also often used as a term to denote better, or higher brow films. For example one would say "Breathless" is cinema, but "Ernest scared stupid" is not.