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.
top
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.
