Joseph Plateau, a Belgian physicist, was the first person to demonstrate moving images in 1832 with his invention called the phenakistoscope. The phenakistoscope used two disks, one with drawn images and the other with slots, that when spun and viewed through the slots and a mirror, created the illusion of motion as the images blended together. While it only allowed one viewer, the later zoetrope improved on the design by not requiring a mirror and enabling multiple viewers.

1. Joseph Plateau
Phenakistoscope

2. “Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (14 October
1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian
physicist. He was the first person to
demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To
do this he used counter rotating disks with
repeating drawn images in small increments of
motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the
other. He called this device of 1832 the
phenakistoscope.”

3. A Phenakitstoscope works by creating an image
when you spin the disc around and look through
the small slits whilst reflecting it in a mirror.

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94OHrt755QU

5. “Online sources sometimes refer to this
invention as the Phantasmascope or the
Phantascope.”
As the images spin so quickly the image
becomes blurred and this creates an animation.
The zoetrope came later and didn’t require a
mirror and unlike the phenakistoscope it could
be used by more than one person at a time.

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rzwdRqsuVM