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September 24, 2008

Phenakistiscope, a Pre-Cinema Device for Dance Animations

Devices for generating dance animations predate the age of cinema. In the 1830s, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau created a contraption called the phenakistiscope.

A typical phenakistiscope is a plate-sized object consisting of two disks. On the outside of one disk (see following images and video) are consecutive frames of animation. On both disks are slits that separate the frames so the viewer can look through the device.

To see the dancers move, you stand in front of a mirror, rotate the disk and look through the slits to watch the reflection of the dancers.

Here are two images from Wikipedia that show you a design of a phenakistiscope and a simulation of one in action.

See larger image of following disk with couple dancing:

phenakistoscope dance couple

See animated version of this disk as if you were watching the reflection of the spinning phenakistiscope in a mirror:

phenakistoscope dance animated

And here's a phenakistiscope animation of a couple waltzing from a post about the history of this device.

The Make blog has a post and video on how to make a Phenakistiscope from scratch. The following video is also helpful for visualizing how this early animation device actually worked (the animation that I link to above on Wikipedia is helpful in terms of showing the animation but it is misleading in how one watched the animation):

As you'll see in the Make post, they created an imaginative electric spinning device using a lollipop stick. In the 19th Century, they would have used a simple manual hand-crank or just spun the disks.

Learn more about the phenakistiscope and view pictures here, here and here.

Posted by Doug Fox on September 24, 2008 9:30 AM



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