Animation can be traced back to 1824 with Peter Roget's paper "The Persistence of Vision with Regard to Moving Objects." The nineteenth century saw many technologies, including Thomas Edison's "Kinetoscope," that were precursors to twentieth-century animation. The early twentieth century saw the introduction of early animated characters like Koko the Clown and Felix the Cat.
The 1930s was something of a Golden Age for animation in the USA, with the flowering of The Walt Disney Company and the debut of classic Warner Brothers cartoons. The decade saw feature film landmarks such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), and the appearance of Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and other iconic characters.
Pixar, founded in 1986, pioneered a new generation of computerized, intelligently-scripted animated films. Some recent Western animated series, such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, are influenced strongly by the visual style and plot sophistication of Japanese anime.