Phenakistoscope

The Phenakistiscope (Greek Phenax = Deceiver and skopein = consider, literally Augentäuscher ) was established by the Belgian physicist Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau in connection with which it carries out Nachbildexperimenten beginning of the 1830s developed. 1833, the first models of Phenakistiscope in London have been implicated as an entertainment medium on the market. The device was also known under the name Phanakistiskop, Phantaskop, Wonder Wheel or Wheel of Life.

Operation

On a rotatable disc drawings are arranged from circular motion phases. Between the drawings are slots. The disk is rotated, the viewer is looking from the rear through the slots on the visible in the drawings, a mirror, for moving it. Impression of movement, characterized in that the alternation between the slot and the disc in each case a new image of the eye in place of the old presented, which is interpreted in the brain as a movement of the same image.

This is the first application of the stroboscopic effect for animating drawn pictures; with the Phenakistiscope the first calculated images were animated. A second important effect occurring is the persistence of the bright image against the dark phase between the slots, so that is hardly consciously perceived and a smooth transition of the images created with each other. The perception of motion at differing images that are shown one after the other, called the phi phenomenon.

Regardless of Plateau developed other scientists such as Simon Ritter von Stampfer and William George Horner, who also dealt with optical phenomena such as the image persistence, similar appliances that were known as the stroboscopic or zootrope. Francis of Uchatius combined the Phenakistiscope 1853 with the magic lantern to a projection apparatus. This invention was developed later by Charles -Émile Reynaud in 1877 with the Praxinoscope through the integration of mirrors and lighting. Further improvements reach Eadweard Muybridge in 1879 with the Zoopraxiskop and Ottomar Anschütz 1884 with the Elektrotachyskop until finally Thomas Alva Edison in 1892 Kinetograph and the Kinetoscope introduced.

Medium for verification of motion studies

To check the possible has become in the 1870s and 1880s by sensitive photographic materials and quick camera shutters shots of moving objects was dependent on the medium " Phenakistiscope ". The correctness of the imaged on the single exposures " seemingly impossible positions" has been widely questioned and could not be verified by the perception. Only the presentation of the individual images in the correct order and at the right speed provided evidence for the scientific relevance of chronophotography.

Perception physiology and Cinematography

Film historians see in Phenakistiscope " The original forms of evolutionary technological development that lead towards the end of the century to a single dominant form. They are considered primarily as a nascent, still incomplete precursor of the film. "

The preoccupation with the " problem of the afterimage and the temporality of the subjective vision " in the 19th century, which was the subject of various branches of science in Europe is, however, classified in a larger epistemological context.