1874 in animation

Events

• December 9: In 1874, Jules Janssen made several practice discs for the recording of the passage of Venus with his series Passage de Vénus, which he intended to record with his photographic revolver. He used a model of the planet and a light source standing in for the Sun. While actual recordings of the passage of Venus have not been located, some practice discs survived and the images of one were turned into a short animated film after the development of cinematography. The images were purportedly taken in Japan by Janssen himself and the Brazilian engineer Francisco Antônio de Almeida by using Janssen's photographic revolver. The revolver could take several dozens of exposures at regulated intervals on a daguerreotype disc. The Janssen revolver was the instrument that originated chronophotography, a branch of photography based on capturing movement from a sequence of images. To create the apparatus Pierre Janssen was inspired by the revolving cylinder of Samuel Colt's revolver.
• Specific date unknown
• *One of the earliest examples of three-dimensional scientific visualisation was Maxwell's thermodynamic surface, sculpted in clay in 1874 by James Clerk Maxwell. This prefigured modern scientific visualization techniques that use computer graphics.
• *In 1874, the photographer Frederick Albert Bridge gave a series of lectures entitled Gems of English Scenery and Song, accompanied by magic lantern slides.
• *By 1874, the photographer Henry Taunt started performing magic lantern shows in his regular series of children's events.

Births

January

April

September

Deaths

Specific date unknown

• Henry Langdon Childe, English showman, (developer of the magic lantern image projector and dissolving views, a precursor of the dissolve in cinematic technique.