Zoopraxiscope

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The zoopraxiscope, first called the zoographiscope or zoogyroscope, was an early device for showing moving pictures and a key predecessor of the movie projector. Invented by photographer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879 and built by 1880, it was used in public lectures (1880–1895) to project Muybridge’s chronophotographic pictures and demonstrate their motion as real movement. The projector used 16-inch glass disks on which an unidentified artist painted silhouettes to create motion while removing backgrounds, allowing imaginary combinations. Only one disk contained real photographs—a horse skeleton posed in different positions.

Later, 12-inch disks (made 1892–1894) had outlines drawn by Erwin F. Faber that were printed onto the disks and then colored by hand; these colored discs were probably not used in Muybridge’s lectures. All 71 known disks, including the photographic one, were drawn in an elongated form to correct projection distortion. The machine used interchangeable slotted metal shutter discs and was hand-cranked. It is considered a major influence on Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson’s Kinetoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system. A book reproduces all 71 surviving zoopraxiscope disks.

Muybridge described it as the first apparatus to synthetically demonstrate movements photographed from life and as a prototype for many later devices.

As specified in Muybridge’s will, the original machine and disks were left to Kingston upon Thames and are kept in the Kingston Museum Bequest Collection, with four disks held in other collections (including the Cinémathèque française and the National Technical Museum in Prague). Muybridge also produced 50 paper “Zoopraxiscope discs” with pictures drawn by Erwin F. Faber. These discs were meant to be sold at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but they were sold slowly and are quite rare. The discs were black-and-white, with twelve chromolithographed versions. Of the colored versions, only four kinds are known to survive (with about five or six copies in existence).