Bio of the pioneers; birth, history, legacy, downfall and death

1. BIO of Pioneers

2. William
George HornerWilliam George Horner was a British mathematician and headmaster born to
an upper class family in Bristol in 1786. He founded his own school located in
located in Bath called “The Seminary” when he was 27. He created something
something called the “Zoetrope” intending on teaching his students with it. He
it. He was incredibly bright becoming an assistant master at his school,
Kingswood. Within 4 years by the age of just 20 he had risen to become the
the head of the school. Even though Horner being incredibly passionate about
about science, resigned this post after just 3 years to start his own school,
school, focusing primarily on mathematics.
He had an incredibly successful career, writing extensively on a broad range
of mathematic theories, (one of which has become a mathematical standard
known as the 'Horner Method' referring to an algebraic equation). Similarly,
to Joseph Plateau he was very much into imagery, specifically optics, which
he had recorded several successful theories. This was just the start of his
journey on creating one of the most influential devices which played a huge
role in order to create the modern-day animation we see now. intrigued in
imagery, and more specifically optics, which he had wrote several successful
theories. Horner was a practised writing for the 'Philosophical Magazine' on
optics and theories relating to illusions.
Horner’s successful pieces of work:
• Horner’s Method;

3. People mistaken him for being the inventor of the Zoetrope, however the origin
of the Zoetrope was first introduced in 180AD. Horner ‘reinvented’ the device
altering it and bringing it back into the spot light.Some debate his significance and that he should not be classed as a great
inventor, since he did not come up with the original Zoetrope idea, nor did he
have any involvement into very important theories revolving around animation
or how optics work. Though, he did effectively gained a bigger audience to
notice animation and made them to understand the movement to experiment
and research optics and helped drive the concept forward. Nevertheless, this
alone cannot be seen as important enough even to make him on par with
Joseph Plateau. In comparison to Horner, Plateau is undeniably the most
influential within the animation movement, and his work contributed far
more.
Outside of animation Horner was an incredibly important figure within science
and mathematics of his time, and made several theories which were the source
for more forward-thinking and evolutionary concepts which has shaped
modern day mathematics.

4. Joseph
Plateau
Joseph Plateau (1801-1883), Belgian physicist, was born at Brussels on the 14th October 1801, and died on the 15th
September 1883 at Ghent, where he had been professor of physics from 1835. He was a pupil and friend of L.A.J.
Quetelet, who had been his influence on the early part of his career. The more authentic studies of Plateau refer
primarily to portions of one or other of two branches of science – physiological optics and molecular forces. He
invented the “stroboscopic” method of studying the emotion of a vibrating body, by observing it through
equidistant radial slits in a revolving disk. In 1829 he incautiously gazed at the midday sun for 20 seconds, with the
view of studying the after effects. The result was blindness for some days, succeeded by a temporary recovery; yet
for the next 14 years his sight gradually deteriorated, and in 1843 he became permanently blind. This misfortune did
not stop is scientific activity. With the assistance of his wife and son, and afterwards by his son-in-law G. L. Van Der
Mensbrugghe, he continued to the end of his life his researches on vision- directing the course of the experiments

5. Plateau is well known for his demonstration of ‘the illusion of a moving image’. This was started way long ago by
Tin Huan back in 180AD, he was the original to be able enlighten how it functions and with scientific theory
refabricate a working device more advanced than any before.
According to official records Plateau was able to read at the age of 6, at that time of period he was seen as a genius
as many adults weren’t still able to read. Some even going as far to say he was a child prodigy.
REFERENCE: Van der Mensbrugghe Biographer & Collaborator
He has always been amused and inquisitive as to the persistence of luminous impressions on the retina (When you
stare at a bright light then look away!) this was only the start of his findings into his animation device. In 1829, he
submitted a thesis based on the field of how the retina exhibits several different things including, colour, moving
images, and reconstruction of images. These concepts together in 1832 created his invention known as the
Phenakistiscope.
Plateau is definitely one of the key figures to the evolution of stop-motion, without his existence and findings of what
would later be known as persistence of vision, animation methods would not have been discovered. This was a key
point to consider, since his work into the retina it became known that they eye in fact can store an image for several
milliseconds which when many were played at speed would give the illusion of a moving image, when in fact it’s
just an overlap of imagery in the retina. This principle animation wouldn’t work, as none yet have grasped a way to
achieve movement into a single image.
In conclusion, Plateau is the foundation for stop-motion advancement, and so the growth of animation as a whole.

6. He was born on the 8th December 1844 and died 9th January 1918. He was a French science teacher and inventor,
responsible for the first projected animated cartoons (an animation device patented in 1877 that up-graded on the
Zoetrope). Emile Reynaud’s father was a horologer and a medal engraver, his mother was a cultivated idealist with
liberal ideas where education was concerned, and an accomplished watercolourist.
At the age of 14 he was already knowledgeable in literary and scientific topics, he was apprenticed to a precision
engineer in Paris, and further studied with the sculptor-photographer Adam Salomon. In no time, he was preparing
lantern slides, photographic and hand-drawn, for the audio-visual lectures arranged by the Abbe Moigno. In 1876
Reynaud decided to make an optical toy in order to amuse a young child. Enhancing on the Phenakistiscope and
Zoetrope, Renaud devised the Praxinoscope, patented on the 21st December 1877, a cylinder with a band of coloured
images fixed inside. The images merged to give a clear, bright, undistorted moving picture without flicker. With his
mother, he took an apartment at the Rue Rodier in Paris, utilizing the adjacent apartment as a workshop where the
Praxinoscope was commercially made, achieving an Honourable Mention in the Paris Exposition of 1878.

7. The following year he included a Patent Supplement for an upgrading – the Praxinoscope Théâtre. The mirror-drum
and cylinder were set in a wooden box in which there was a glass-covered viewing aperture, reflecting a card printed
with a background. The moving subjects – a juggler, clowns, a steeple-chase – were printed on a black band, and
therefore seemed overlaid on an appropriate scene. The Projection Praxinoscope was the further progress which
utilized a sequence of transparent pictures on glass; an oil lamp illuminated the images and the mirror reflections
passed through a lens onto a screen. The same lamp projected a static background, and once again the moving pictures
were observed in a suitable setting. All 3 models were established to the Société Française de Photographie in 1880.
December 1888 Reynaud patented his Théâtre Optique, a large-scale Praxinoscope proposed for public projection.
Using spools to feed and take-up the extended picture band, sequences were no longer limited to short cyclic
movements. The pictures were painted on gelatine squares and affixed between leather bands, with gaps in metal
strips between the photos engaging in pins on the spinning wheel so that each photo was lined up with an aspect of the
mirror drum. This was the main commercial utilization of the perforations that should have been so imperative for
effective cinematography.

8. In 1892 Reynaud consented to an agreement with the Musée Grevin in Paris to exhibit the 'Pantomimes
Lumineuses'; the main animated pictures indicated openly on a screen by means for long, transparent
bands of pictures, and gave the first appear on the 28th October. The apparatus was set up behind a
translucent screen and Reynaud seemingly gave the vast majority of the introductions himself, deftly
controlling the picture bands to- and for to extend the sequences, making a twelve or fifteen-minute
execution from the 500 frames of Pauvre Pierrot. Two other early subjects were Clown et ses chiens (300
frames) and Un Bon boc (700). Extraordinary music was incorporated by Gaston Paulin, with eminent
publication artwork by Jules Cheret, and the show was a win. It was closed from 1st March 1894 until 1st
January 1895, reviving with new subjects, Un Reve au coin de feu and Autour d'une cabine. Ahead of
schedule in 1896 the clowns Footit and Chocolat played out askethc, Guillaume Tell, for the
Photoscenographe cine camera contrived or gained by Reynaud, the subsequent pictures corrected, hand-
hued and mounted as horizontal bands for the Théâtre Optique. This was finished by August, and in
November Reynaud filmed performing artist Galipaux in Le Premiere cigare, on an enhanced camera. This
was prepared for projection by early summer 1897. The next year conventional movies, appeared on a
Demenÿ Chronophotographe, were blended with the Pantomimes Lumineuses'. Reynaud experimented
unsuccessfully with an oscillating mirror projector trying to refresh his presentation technique, yet the
fight with the opposition of the Cinématographe and its imitators, with their continually evolving
programmes, was at last lost, and last show occurred on 28th February 1900. From 1903 to 1907 Reynaud
dealt with a device for viewing short stereoscopic series of movement, the Stereo-cinema, taking after a
double Praxinoscope arranged vertically, yet it was not financially feasible. Prior to his demise in January

9. Downfall and Legacy
• By 1910 Reynaud had been commercially
defeated by the Etiene-Jules Marey’s
cinematograph and the Lumière brother films;
• He died completely penniless 7 years later;
• His method was the first use of film spools and
sprocket holes things that are still essential to
analogue projection today;
• His remaining films are still recognised by
scholars today as the first animated films
(Reynaud has an IMDb account).

10. BIBLIOGRAPHIES
• Theodora.com. (1995). Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau - Encyclopedia. [online] Available at:
http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/p2/joseph_antoine_ferdinand_plateau.html [Accessed 28 Mar. 2017].
• Herbert, S. and McKernan, L. (2017). Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. [online] Victorian-cinema.net.
Available at: http://www.victorian-cinema.net/reynaud [Accessed 28 May 2017].
• Buchan, E. (2013). Charles Emile Reynaud.