Definite article before "cinema"?

I'd like to speak about cinema as an invention.
Do we say

The cinema was invented in 1895.

or

Cinema was invented in 1895.

If you preface the noun "cinema" with 'the' then you are indicating, in BrE at least, the physical location where one goes to see a film/motion picture and one would not say the building was "invented".

If you leave off 'the' from the word "cinema" then you are referring to the collective noun meaning "motion pictures as an art form". So if you mean that the artform came into being in 1895 then the second sentence is correct. Though whether an artform is invented is probably debatable.

See Cinema (Cambridge Dictionaries)

However if you mean that the technology delivering motion pictures was invented in 1895 then just say that.

It would be cinema was invented in 1895.

You'd use the cinema to talk about a theatre in particular, e.g. the cinema in Example Square was opened in 1950.