Early motion picture projectors were expensive, difficult to operate, and cellulose nitrate film was too dangerous for the home. Gramophone discs records suggested an alternative form factor that had proven successful with everyday users.

A number of pre-cinema devices had already used photographic frames on a disc around the end of the 19^th century, including Clermont–Huet's Cinéphot, Anshütz's Electrotachyscope, Demenÿ's Bioscope and Victor's Animatograph. In each, the frames were positioned around the circumference of the disc like in the original phenakistoscope. This limited animations to a couple of seconds, too short to make them more than amusements or scientific curiosities.

In 1900, Leonard Ulrich Kamm addressed this limitation with a camera and projector that could hold up to 600 frames printed in a spiral on a non-flammable glass disc. The animation lasted about 45 seconds—not enough for a significant narrative, but adequate for an “animated photograph,” as it was known at the time. The device was unsuccessful and on the market only briefly.

What became known as the Spirograph was invented in 1907 by Theodore Brown of Britain (the patent is also in his wife's name, Bessie Kate Brown.) Charles Urban purchased the patent and worked on the invention during and after the first World War. The final version could hold 1200 frames, which lasted about one and a half minutes. The negatives were taken with standard cameras and 35 mm film, then reduced and printed to the disc. Urban shifted his focus to the education market and by the time he was ready to begin selling it, claimed to have manufactured 4000 projectors and a large library of discs. Unfortunately, his company, Urban Motion Picture Industries, ran out of money before the Spirograph reached the market and the company was bankrupt by 1924. In any case, 16 mm film, which came along in 1923, addressed many of the same problems for non-theatrical applications.