| History:
In 1832, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and his sons introduced
the phenakistoscope ("spindle viewer"). It was also invented
independently in the same year by Simon von Stampfer of Vienna,
Austria, who called his invention a stroboscope. Plateau's
inspiration had come primarily from the work of Michael Faraday and
Peter Mark Roget (the compiler of Roget's Thesaurus). Faraday had
invented a device he called "Michael Faraday's Wheel," that
consisted of two discs that spun in opposite directions from each
other. From this, Plateau took another step, adapting Faraday's
wheel into a toy he later named the phenakistoscope.
How it works:
The phenakistoscope uses the persistence of motion principle to
create an illusion of motion. Although this principle had been
recognized by the Greek mathematician Euclid and later in
experiments by Newton, it was not until 1829 that this principle
became firmly established by Joseph Plateau.
The phenakistoscope consisted of two discs mounted on the same
axis. The first disc had slots around the edge, and the second
contained drawings of successive action, drawn around the disc in
concentric circles. Unlike Faraday's Wheel, whose pair of discs
spun in opposite directions, a phenakistoscope's discs spin together
in the same direction. When viewed in a mirror through the first
disc's slots, the pictures on the second disc will appear to move.
What became of it:
After going to market, the phenakistoscope received other names,
including Phantasmascope and Fantoscope (and phenakistiscope in
Britain and many other countries). It was quite successful for two
years until William George Horner invented the zoetrope, which
offered two improvements on the phenakistoscope. First, the
zoetrope did not require a viewing mirror. The second and most
influential improvement was that more than one person could view the
moving pictures at the same time.
Links to animations:
(requires JavaScript-enabled web browser)
Cyclist (small,
medium,
large)
Instructional Phenakistoscope
Dragon
Waltz
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