Its the birthday of Willis O'Brien, the pioneering stop-motion animator behind King Kong.  He began experimenting with articulated wooden figures with molded rubber muscles in 1913.  O'Brien realized he could make the figures appear to move if filmed them one frame at a time and moving them in between shots. 

 

He made several short stop-motion films for Thomas Edison's Biograph Company.  In 1925, O'Brien worked on the film The Lost World, based on a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  He placed a small rubber bladder inside the figures to give them the appearance of breathing as they moved.

 

 

O'Brien is most known for his work on King Kong which has influenced many generations of animators after him.