William Horner (Zoetrope)

What is it and how does it work?
A zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devises that produce the illusion of movement by displaying a sequence of drawings and photographs. The zoetrope worked by having a set of images inside a cylinder and the viewer would look through the gap in the cylinder when it is moving, doing this blurred the images together and created an illusion of movement.





Who invented it and when?
According to Wikipedia the idea was first explored in July 1833 by Simon Stampfer as in his pamphlet about his invention the phenakistiscope, he mentioned an idea which had the images in a cylinder as well but he chose to have it in a disc. However the definitive zoetrope was invented by William Ensign Lincoln in 1865 when he was 18 years old and a sophomore at Brown University in Rhode Island.

how was this better than the phenakistoscope?


This was better than its predecessor the phenakistoscope as it had to be used with an mirror and it could only be used by one person at a time. Whereas the zoetrope got rid of the mirror and the multiple gabs meant it could be viewed by more than one person it was also more accessible to use as there was no mirror.

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