The pioneering French filmmaker Georges Méliès claimed to have accidentally developed the stop trick, as he wrote in Les Vues Cinématographiques in 1907[5][6] (translated from French): An obstruction of the apparatus that I used in the beginning (a rudimentary apparatus in which the film would often tear or get stuck and refuse to advance) produced an unexpected effect, one day when I was prosaically filming the Place de L'Opéra; I had to stop for a minute to free the film and to get the machine going again.
In any case, the substitution splice was both the first special effect Méliès perfected, and the most important in his body of work.
[4] Indeed, Méliès often used substitution splicing not as an obvious special effect, but as an inconspicuous editing technique, matching and combining short takes into one apparently seamless longer shot.
[1] Segundo de Chomón is among the other filmmakers who used substitution splicing to create elaborate fantasy effects.
[1] D.W. Griffith's 1909 film The Curtain Pole, starring Mack Sennett, used substitution splices for comedic effect.