1868 in animation
Events in 1868 in animation.
Events
- Specific date unknown:
- *In 1868, the physicist James Clerk Maxwell had an improved zoetrope constructed. Instead of slits, his version used concave lenses with a focal length equaling the diameter of the cylinder. The virtual image was thus seen in the centre and appeared much more sharp and steady than in the original zoetrope. Maxwell drew several strips that mostly demonstrated subjects relating to physics, like the vibrations of a harp string or Helmholtz's vortex rings threading through each other. An article about the "Zootrope perfectionné" was published in the French science magazine Le Cosmos in 1869, but Maxwell never marketed his animation device.
- *In 1868, the Birmingham-based printer John Barnes Linnett received the first patent for the flip book. He gave the name kineograph to his device. A flip book is a small book with relatively springy pages, each having one in a series of animation images located near its unbound edge. The user bends all of the pages back, normally with the thumb. Then by a gradual motion of the hand, the user allows them to spring free one at a time. As with the phenakistoscope, the zoetrope, and the praxinoscope, the illusion of motion is created by the apparent sudden replacement of each image by the next in the series. Unlike those other inventions, no view-interrupting shutter or assembly of mirrors is required and no viewing device other than the user's hand is absolutely necessary. Early film animators cited flip books as their inspiration more often than the earlier devices, which did not reach as wide an audience.