The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the
movie projector. It was conceived by
photographic pioneer
Eadweard Muybridge in 1879 (and built for him by January 1880 to project his famous
chronophotographic pictures in motion and thus prove that these were authentic). Muybridge used the projector in his public lectures from 1880 to 1895. The projector used 16" glass disks onto which Muybridge had an unidentified artist paint the sequences as silhouettes. This technique eliminated the backgrounds and enabled the creation of fanciful combinations and additional imaginary elements. Only one disk used photographic images, of a horse skeleton posed in different positions. A later series of 12″ discs, made in 1892–1894, used outlines drawn by Erwin F. Faber that were printed onto the discs photographically, then colored by hand. These colored discs were probably never used in Muybridge's lectures. All images of the known 71 disks, including those of the photographic disk, were rendered in elongated form to compensate the distortion of the projection. The projector was related to other projecting
phenakistiscope
The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluid illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known unde ...
s and used some slotted metal shutter discs that were interchangeable for different picture disks or different effects on the screen. The machine was hand-cranked.
The device appears to have been one of the primary inspirations for
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
and
William Kennedy Dickson's
Kinetoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system.
Images from all of the known seventy-one surviving zoopraxiscope discs have been reproduced in the book ''Eadweard Muybridge: The Kingston Museum Bequest'' (The Projection Box, 2004).
As stipulated in Muybridge's will, the original machine and disks in his possession were left to
Kingston upon Thames, where they are still kept in the
Kingston Museum Muybridge Bequest Collection (except for four discs that are in other collections, including those of the
Cinémathèque française and the
National Technical Museum in Prague).
[
Muybridge also produced a series of 50 different paper 'Zoopraxiscope discs' (basically ]phenakistiscope
The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluid illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known unde ...
s), again with pictures drawn by Erwin F. Faber. The discs were intended for sale at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but seem to have sold very poorly and are quite rare. The discs were printed in black-and-white, with twelve different discs also produced as chromolithographed versions. Of the coloured versions only four different ones are known to still exist (with a total of five or six extant copies).
See also
* History of cinema
* List of film formats
* Strobe light
References
External links
Zoopraxiscope - Royal Borough of Kingston
Information about the Eadweard Muybridge Collection.
* ''Candy Spinner'' mobile application featuring zoopraxiscope images
AndroidApple
{{Precursors of film
Film and video technology
History of film
Audiovisual introductions in 1879
1870s in animation