Zoetrope
A zoetrope is a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion, by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. A zoetrope is a cylindrical variant of the phénakisticope, an apparatus suggested after the stroboscopic discs were introduced in 1833. The definitive version of the zoetrope, with replaceable film picture film strips, was introduced as a toy by Milton Bradley in 1866 and became very successful.
Etymology
The name zoetrope was composed from the Greek root words ζωή zoe, "life" and τρόπος tropos, "turning" as a translation of "wheel of life".The term was coined by inventor William E. Lincoln, of Providence, Rhode Island.
Technology
The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with cuts vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the cuts at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion. From the late 19th century, devices working on similar principles have been developed, named analogously as [|linear zoetropes] and [|3D zoetropes], with traditional zoetropes referred to as "cylindrical zoetropes" if distinction is needed.The zoetrope works on the same principle as its predecessor, the phenakistoscope, but is more convenient and allows the animation to be viewed by several people at the same time. Instead of being radially arrayed on a disc, the sequence of pictures depicting phases of motion is on a paper strip. For viewing, this is placed against the inner surface of the lower part of an open-topped metal drum, the upper part of which is provided with a vertical viewing slit across from each picture. The drum, on a spindle base, is spun. The faster the drum is spun, the smoother the animation appears.
Earlier rotating devices with images
An earthenware bowl from Iran, over 5000 years old, could be considered a predecessor of the zoetrope. This bowl is decorated in a series of images portraying a goat jumping toward a tree and eating its leaves. Though the images are sequential and seem evenly distributed around the bowl, to have the images appear as an animation the bowl would have to rotate quite fast and steadily while a stroboscopic effect would somehow have to be generated. As such, it remains very uncertain if the artist who created the bowl actually intended to create an animation.According to a 4th-century Chinese historical text, the 1st-century BC Chinese mechanical engineer and craftsman Ding Huan created a lamp with a circular band with images of birds and animals that moved "quite naturally" when the heat of the lamp caused the band to rotate. However, it is unclear whether this really created the illusion of motion or whether the account was an interpretation of the spatial movement of the pictures of animals. Possibly the same device was referred to as "umbrella lamp" and mentioned as "a variety of zoetrope" which "may well have originated in China" by historian of Chinese technology Joseph Needham. It had pictures painted on thin panes of paper or mica on the sides of a light cylindrical canopy bearing vanes at the top. When placed over a lamp it would give an impression of movement of animals or men. Needham mentions several other descriptions of figures moving after the lighting of a candle or lamp, but some of these have a semi-fabulous context or can be compared to heat operated carousel toys. It is possible that all these early Chinese examples were actually the same as, or very similar to, the "trotting horse lamp" known in China since before 1000 AD. This is a lantern which on the inside has cut-out silhouettes or painted figures attached to a shaft with a paper vane impeller on top, rotated by heated air rising from a lamp. The moving silhouettes are projected on the thin paper sides of the lantern. Some versions added extra motion with jointed heads, feet or hands of figures triggered by a transversely connected iron wire. None of these lamps are known to have featured sequential substitution of images depicting motion and thus don't display animation in the way that the zoetrope does.
John Bate described a simple device in his 1634 book "The Mysteries of Nature and Art". It consisted of "a light Card, with severall images set upon it", fastened on the four spokes of a wheel, which was turned around by heat inside a glass or horn cylinder, "ſo that you would think the immages to bee living creatures by their motion". The description seems rather close to a simple four-phase animation device depicted and described in Henry V. Hopwood's 1899 book Living Pictures. Hopwood gave no name, date or any additional information for this toy that rotated when blown upon. A similar device inside a small zoetrope drum with four slits, was marketed around 1900 by a Parisian company as L'Animateur. However, Bate's device as it is seen in the accompanying illustration seems not to have actually animated the images, but rather to have moved the images around spatially.
Invention
Simon Stampfer (1833)
, one of the inventors of the phenakistiscope animation disc, suggested in July 1833 in a pamphlet that the sequence of images for the stroboscopic animation could alternatively be placed on a cylinder, or a looped strip of paper or canvas stretched around two parallel rollers.William Horner (1834)
After taking notice of Joseph Plateau's invention of the phénakisticope British mathematician William George Horner thought up a cylindrical variation and published details about its mathematical principles in January 1834. He called his device the Dædaleum, as a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus. Horner's revolving drum had viewing slits between the pictures, instead of above as the later zoetrope variations would have. Horner planned to publish the dædaleum with optician King, Jr in Bristol but it "met with some impediment probably in the sketching of the figures".Experimental photographic sequence viewers (1850s–1860s)
During the next three decades the phénakisticope remained the more common animation device, while relatively few experimental variations followed the idea of Horner's dædaleum or Stampfer's stroboscopic cylinder. Most of the zoetrope-like devices created between 1833 and 1865 were intended for viewing photographic sequences, often with a stereoscopic effect. These included Johann Nepomuk Czermak's Stereophoroskop, about which he published an article in 1855.On February 27, 1860, Peter Hubert Desvignes received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices. This included a version that used an endless band of pictures running between two spools that was intermittently lit by an electric spark. Desvignes' Mimoscope, received an Honourable Mention "for ingenuity of construction" at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. It could "exhibit drawings, models, single or stereoscopic photographs, so as to animate animal movements, or that of machinery, showing various other illusions". Desvignes "employed models, insects and other objects, instead of pictures, with perfect success". The horizontal slits allowed a much improved view, with both eyes, of the opposite pictures.
William Ensign Lincoln & Milton Bradley's Zoetrope (1865–1867)
William Ensign Lincoln invented the definitive zoetrope in 1865 when he was about 18 years old and a sophomore at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Lincoln's patented version had the viewing slits on a level above the pictures, which allowed the use of easily replaceable strips of images. It also had an illustrated paper disc on the base, which was not always exploited on the commercially produced versions. On advice of a local bookstore owner, Lincoln sent a model to color lithographers and board game manufacturers Milton Bradley and Co. Some shop owners advertised the zoetrope in American newspapers in December 1866. William E. Lincoln applied for a U.S. patent for his Zoëtrope on July 27, 1866 as an assignor to Milton Bradley, and it was granted on April 23, 1867.It was also patented in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on June 7, 1867 under no. 629, by Henry Watson Hallett, and in the Second French Empire by Charles William May.
Over the years Milton Bradley released at least seven numbered series of twelve zoetrope strips each, as well as a set of twelve strips by Professor Robert Hallowell Richards showing the gradual transformations from one isometric form to another, and one separately available strip showing the progress of the Grecian bend. The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company was licensed as the British publisher and repeated most of the Milton Bradley animations, while adding a set of twelve animations by famous British illustrator George Cruikshank in 1870. French licensee F. Delacour & Bakes produced the "Zootrope, ou cercle magique", of which newspaper Le Figaro ordered 10,000 copies to sell to subscribers at a reduced price.