then spun in the same direction and when viewed, the mirrored disks will give the impression that
the images are moving. The only drawbacks to the cinematic experience was that only one person
could use the phenakistoscope at the same time and if spun to fast the images would become blurry.
All the images were hand drawn drawings.
The Phenakistoscope was a success for about two years until William George Horner created the
Zoetrope, this invention added two improvements to the phenakistoscope. The improvements were
that the zoetrope did not need a viewing mirror and that more than one person can view the images
at the same time. The reason we see this the way we do is because of persistence of vision.
Persistence of vision is when you put several discrete images together to make them merger to look
like a single image in your head. This development of additional devices shows the popularity that
they were gaining in the general population. The human eye and brain can only process 10 to 12
different images per second which means their brain only remembers an image for up to a fifteenth
of a second. If an image is replaced in this time, then it will create a moving illusion.
This clip shows you a Phenakistoscope which gives the illusion of a frog jumping over the shoulder of
another frog.
With the inevitable march of progress over the next 50 years these small little devices became
surpassed by the invention of the camera.
In 1879 Eadweard Muybridge invented a fast camera shutter and used other artistic techniques to
create the first photographs that show sequences of movement. This device he called the
“Zoopraxiscope”. IT projected a series of images going through different stages of movement being
captured by the use of multiple cameras. He is most famous for motion studies of horses passing in
front of cameras capturing the movements in dozens of pictures. Leland Stanford hired Eadweard
Muybridge to take pictures of his race horse because he wanted to know if a galloping race horse’s
hoofs all left the ground at the same time. To figure this out Eadweard Muybridge used 12 cameras,
that were triggered by string as the horse galloped through. Not only did he prove that all four of the
horse’s hoofs were off the ground at the same time but he also gave the world a better
understanding of motion. Muybridge spent until 1884 making these “motion pictures” and it is
because of Eadweard Muybridge that movies became possible.