Birth, Death, Legacy and Downfall of these following pioneers; William George Horner, Joseph Plateau and Charles-Emile Reynaud.

1. BIO of Pioneers

2. William George
Horner
William 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.

3. 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;
• A Tribute of A Friend (A poem);
• Natural Magic (Leaflet on Optics).

4. 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.

5. 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 which they
made for him, and interpreting the bearing of the results.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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 1918, in a fit of depression, he
destroyed the surviving Théâtre Optique mechanism and tossed everything except two of his picture bands into the Seine.
Reproductions of the two groups - Pauvre Pierrot and Autour d'une cabine - are today still being exhibited, as the main surviving
cases of his public screen motion picture work.

12. 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).

13. 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.