science · 13 March 1882 · 142 years ago
In 1882, the zoopraxiscope, an optical apparatus invented by Eadweard J. Muybridge (1879) to exhibit photographs of moving animals, was shown at the Royal Institution in the presence of the Prince of Wales. Muybridge's great work on the subject was published in 1887-9, and his Animals in Motion in 1899.* The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. It functioned as essentially the first movie projector, with a sequence of stop-motion silhouette images hand-painted around the edge of a circular glass disk, which was loaded onto the projector's side in a vertical position. In 1893, he lectured at "Zoopraxigraphical Hall" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
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