Zoetrope

A zoetrope is a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion by mounting a sequence of images or photographs around the inside of a rotating cylinder; the viewer looks through a series of vertical slits cut into the cylinder's wall as it spins, and because each slit briefly reveals only one image at a time and scans past the eye quickly, the images blend into what appears to be continuous, unblurred movement rather than a blur of overlapping pictures. The device evolved from the earlier phenakistiscope, which produced a similar effect using a rotating disk rather than a cylinder, and its name, coined by the American inventor William E. Lincoln of Providence, Rhode Island, combines Greek roots meaning wheel of life. The Milton Bradley Company commercialized what became the definitive zoetrope design in 1866, introducing replaceable paper film strips that could be swapped in and out of the device; this design placed its viewing slits above the images rather than between them, which made the strips easy to replace and let several people view the animation at the same time, advantages that helped make this version highly successful commercially.