The phenakistoscope was popular for two years until William Horner developed the zoetrope in 1834. This was based on Plateau’s phenakistoscope however, had two key improvements. The phenakistoscope required a mirror for viewing while the zoetrope did not. The zoetrope also allowed multiple people to watch it once while only one person at a time could watch through the phenakistoscope. A series of pictures is placed around the bottom of the drum while slits are placed around the top of the drum. The viewer then looks through the slots as it spins and the images appear to move. The faster the drum was spun the faster the images would appear to move, however, if the drum was spun too quickly then the images would blur together and so wouldn't look like the drawings were moving and instead would just appear as a blur.
Charles-Emile Reynaud (1844-1918) was a French inventor who invented the praxinoscope. The praxinoscope was patented in 1877. The praxinoscope was the successor of the zoetrope. It still used the spinning drum, but instead of using slits in the drum to view the images through, the images are reflected by mirrors in the middle of the drum. The animation can be viewed by looking at the mirror from any point around the drum. By looking at the mirror instead of through slits it meant that the image was less distorted and brighter than the zoetrope. The praxinoscope had a smoother animation than the zoetrope as instead of looking through slits the images were reflected onto a mirror.
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was an English photographer known for his work in motion pictures. He invented the zoopraxiscope in 1879 which could show a series of images taken from multiple cameras. A famous example is the galloping horse which shows animals in a fluid motion. By taking a series of pictures through 24 cameras set up along a race track and by showing them frame by frame he was able to slow it down to show images that the human eye would not be able to see. He proved that horses lift their legs of the ground when running by capturing pictures of a horse running. This would not be able to be seen with the human eye. By setting of 12 cameras off in quick succession he managed to captured 12 photos of the horse running at different stages. Once these were developed they were played on a projector that fed the film through the machine at a speed to make the images appear to be moving. This was a leap forward for animation as instead of using drawn pictures on a spinning drum, these were real photos played back through a projector similarly to stop frame today. This used a higher frame rate than the drums did as the drawings only used about 6 frames per second.
(Galloping Horse by Eadweard Muybridge)
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He has been called one of the greatest inventors of all time. He invented the kinetograph as a way for images to be viewed. Muybridge used a machine like this to play his images. The viewer would look through a hole in the machine to see the images as they were fed through the machine. This worked as the predecessor to the modern projector used in cinemas now. It could, however, not be transported as it was too heavy and bulky. Edison’s films were made at 40 frames per second, which was much faster than any previous frame rate, however, in order to play them at such a fast speed the motor was very loud.