Film emerged as one of the first mass-produced cultural forms of the twentieth century and cinema became one of its distinctive and highly influential industries. Based on new technologies of mechanical reproduction that made possible simulations of the real and the production of fantasy worlds, cinema provided a novel mode of culture that changed patterns of leisure activity and played an important role in social life. Early films were the inventions of technicians and entrepreneurs like the Lumière brothers and Méliès in France, and the Edison Corporation in the United States.