Zoetrope

From first scientific toys that used animated images to modern movies, retinal persistence has been fundamental to fooling the mind into believing that a series of static images are in motion.

In1834, the English mathematician George Horner proposed a practical apparatus based on the phenakistoscope of Plateau and Stampfer (1830). It eliminated the need for a mirror and it enabled several people at the same time to view the moving pictures- an advance over the single spectator of the earlier toy.

Includes 14 animated strips.

Height: 225 mm (8.86")
Diameter: 205 mm (8.07")

A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. It consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinder's interior. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together so that the user sees a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, the equivalent of a motion picture. Cylindrical zoetropes have the property of causing the images to appear thinner than their actual sizes when viewed in motion through the slits.