The history of the short film largely mirrors that of the feature, with the exception that the short form has often precipitated trends and acted as guinea pig for wider industry developments. From its inception as no more than an extension of the photograph to its place in today's portable media revolution, the short continually breaks new ground.

The first films were short films and at one time they were the only films around, giving birth to today's cinema. Limited technology made films necessarily brief and they were mostly observational, like Thomas Edison's one-shot short Fred Ott's Sneeze (literally that), made in the 1890s and thought to be the oldest remaining motion picture film. Like internet video blogging and other downloadable live content, these films were novelties, showing how new technology was being used, for a small fee.

The Lumiere Brothers progressed these initial single-shot films with the invention of a camera that could develop and project film, the first products of this being Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895), followed by The Arrival of a Train at the Station (1895).

By the early 20th century films had become big business in the United States and subject matter had moved on from the purely observational. Studios existed for the sole production of shorts, and nickelodeons (large theatre stores) opened up, the first in Pittsburg in 1905, showing films lasting 15 to 20 minutes. Named because entrance cost a nickel, they were attracting an average of two million people a day by 1907. The films were a mixture of travelogues (often taken from a moving train), song and dance acts, sports events (mostly boxing) and other entertainments that allowed these film theatres to compete with live theatre and music halls.

In 1908 a young filmmaker began dominating the shorts industry, making at least 50 films a year (over 100 in 1909). By 1914 he'd moved onto features, and with the success of Birth of a Nation in 1915, DW Griffith established the feature film (four reels or more) as the dominant market force, relegating the short to a filler.

Short filmmakers refused to admit defeat, and directors like Thomas Edison began making shorts in the form of serials. These were short episodes centred around a few key characters, such as Edison's What Happened to Mary (1912). MGM took interest and capitalised on the format to become major contenders in the business. Other reputable directors dabbled in shorts, like Charlie Chaplin who made several between 1915-18, mainly social commentaries disguised as comical farce (The Tramp, By the Sea, The Immigrant). Buster Keaton joined him in the 1920s (Hard Luck, Cops, The Frozen North), as did Laurel and Hardy (Mixed Nuts, The Weak-End Party, The Handy Man).

Shorts continued to break cinema ground in the twenties. Robert Flaherty's seminal Nanook of the North (1921) established the documentary subject as a serious and legitimate film medium, and began an important artistic tradition. Sound films were first experimented with in the short form, mainly as demonstrations of famous people talking or singing, such as George Bernard Shaw's monologues on Shaw Talks for Movietone News in 1927.

By the end of the 1920s Disney had made Steamboat Willy (1928), the first cartoon with sound to achieve widespread popularity (and feature a certain animated mouse). It would be another ten years before the studio produced their first feature.

In the late 1920s the avant-garde movement became interested in shorts, attracting Jean Renoir (The Little Match Girl), Man Ray (The Mysteries of the Chateau de De) and Salvador Dali (An Andalusian Dog with Luis Bunuel).

During the 1930s shorts become increasingly political, particularly with the advent of WWI and the Russian Revolution, where they were used for propaganda purposes, and as an experimental form for new ideas such as German Expressionism (as in those made by Fritz Lang and Erik von Stroheim).

Making documentary shorts became popular in France after WWII, concentrating on location shooting, direct sound and hand-held cameras; pioneering techniques that were to be explored in greater detail by the cinema verite movement of Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard.

But the short form was still eclipsed by the feature, and seemed unable to get the serious attention of critics and cinema audiences. Writing in 1949, Alex Strausser (in his book Ideas For Short Films) describes shorts as "amateur" projects without appeal to a wide audience; if an amateur should even consider making a feature film, it would test "the good temper and purses of all those concerned with them". He also advises keeping films to three or four minutes, the length of a gramaphone record and the film's soundtrack, the main title of the following film long enough to allow time to change the record.

Technology again saved the short from such doldrums. The advent of television in the 1950s breathed new life into the medium and the 30 or 60 minute short format gained currency. The politicised and experimental age of the 1960s saw the growth of underground independent shorts, such as Roman Polanski and Jean-Pierre Rousseau's The Fat and the Lean (1961). With the introduction of 8mm and 16mm film formats, the medium became more accessible and affordable to a wider range of creatives. Andy Warhol is an example of an artist who crossed over into filmmaking, and made many shorts (eg. Kiss, Sleep, Eat and Haircut).

This increased accessibility, driven by developing technology, persisted throughout the 1970s, allowing younger and less established individuals to experiment. Student filmmakers George Lucas (Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB), Stephen Spielberg (Escape to Nowhere) and Oliver Stone (Last Year in Viet Nam) established their filmmaking credentials in the short form.

By the 1980s the short subject or form became known as the short film, defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as having a maximum length of 80 minutes. With the launch of multi-channel TV in the nineties, the short took on a new life as music video (eg. Michael Jackson's Thriller) or extended TV commercial (such as those made by-up-and-coming directors Terry Gilliam, David Puttnam, Alan Parker and Ridley Scott).

Now in the noughties, the internet and personal entertainment devices have allowed filmmakers to manage their own distribution, to a huge audience, via specialised personal websites like My Space and YouTube, or content providers like i-Tune. Short filmmakers have been as quick as ever to exploit the opportunities new technology has brought the medium. Across the Hall (2005) was made initially as a 25 minute short and shown at festivals, then re-cut and split into two parts to download onto a mobile phone. The film recognises the benefits of commercial endorsement and its target environment with a story arc that relies on heavy use of a Samsung mobile, and the film is hosted on a Samsung website.