science · 05 February 1861 · 163 years ago
In 1861, a U.S. patent was issued for the kinematoscope - a photographic attempt to show motion - to Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia as an "improvement in exhibiting stereoscopic pictures of moving objects (No. 31,357). A series of still pictures with successive stages of action was mounted on blades of a paddle and viewed through slits passed under the lens of a stereoscope revolved at right angles. The pictures were were visible only in the cabinet. The picture was not seen whole at once, but only by degrees as the cylinder revolved. The inventor wished to show pictures such as human motion or the revolving wheels of machinery. He applied stereoscopic viewing to the existing principle of toy phatasmascopes using rotating discs.
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