On this day, July 19, 1883, animator, inventor, and film director Max Fleischer was born in Krackow, Poland. After his family emigrated to the US they lived in New York City. While working for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle he began doing cartoons. Fleischer devised a mechanical way to simplify the process of animating movement by tracing frames of live action film and was granted a patent for the Rotoscope in 1915. As the head of Fleischer Studios, he brought characters like Betty Boop and Popeye to the movie screen.