La Charcuterie mécanique is an 1895 "humorous subject" (as classed by its makers) created by the Lumière Brothers. Phil Hardy

Phil Hardy (journalist)

Phil Hardy is an English film and music industry journalist. He was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire in 1945 and studied at the University of Sussex, 1964-1969, during which time he was a visiting student at the Berkeley campus of the University of California . At Sussex he started The Brighton Film...

's The Overlook Film Encyclopedia

The Aurum Film Encyclopedia

The Aurum Film Encyclopedia is a multi-volume reference work on cinema, published in the UK by Aurum Press and edited by Phil Hardy. The first volume, devoted to western films, appeared in 1983, with eight subsequent volumes announced at that time as "forthcoming". However, as of 2007, only...

: Science Fiction classes it as the first science fiction film

Science fiction film

Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...

. Translating "the mechanical butcher," the film purports to show a machine that automatically turns a live pig into various pork products; however, at least in surviving prints of the film, it looks like little more is going on than a butcher hawking his wares from a stand that just happens to have "La Charcuterie mécanique" painted on it.

The theme was widely repeated in films such as Making Sausages (aka The End of All Things) (1897) by George Albert Smith

George Albert Smith (inventor)

George Albert Smith was a stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, astronomer, inventor, and one of the pioneers of British cinema, who is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short-films from 1897-1903 which pioneered film...

, which depicted cats and dogs being converted into sausage (along with a duck and a boot) by a machine. Smith recorded the first sale to Owen Brooks on December 22, 1897. American Mutoscope and Biograph made The Sausage Machine the same year, which was a parody of the conveyor belt

Conveyor belt

A conveyor belt consists of two or more pulleys, with a continuous loop of material - the conveyor belt - that rotates about them. One or both of the pulleys are powered, moving the belt and the material on the belt forward. The powered pulley is called the drive pulley while the unpowered pulley...

 system. Edison Studios

Edison Studios

Edison Studios was an American motion picture production company owned by the Edison Company of inventor Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films as the Edison Manufacturing Company and Thomas A. Edison, Inc. until the studio's closing in 1918...

 followed with Fun in a Butcher Shop (1901) and Dog Factory (1904), both of which showed pet dogs being turned into sausages. The former showed simply a primitive crank, while the latter film depicted an electric machine with a reversible process.