One of the first special effects was The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots 1895). Inventor and moviemaker Thomas Edison substituted a dummy for the actress. In a short sequence, Mary knelt down and put her head on the block as the executioner raised a large axe. When the axe came down, Mary's head apparently rolled off the chopping block. Actually was the dummy's head. When it the audiences saw the scene, they gasped in horror. Since then, tricks like this to make people see things filmmakers have used that didn't happen in real life.