The Illusion of Motion -- May 20, 2016

This post is part of the Classic Movie Ice Cream Social Blogathon, hosted by Fritzi at Movies Silently (http://moviessilently.com/2016/05/20/the-classic-movie-ice-cream-social-is-here/).  Fritzi wants to focus "on classic movie-themed cheer. I’m supplying the ice cream (in digital form) and you’ll bring the cheer."

disney-pal.com

2007

When my daughter was younger, we went to Disneyland every summer.  There were two places on Main Street that we would always visit.  The Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlour served delightful ice cream in huge waffle cones which were made on the premises.  I usually had mint chip.  Then we would go to the adjoining Penny Arcade.

2007

 I always had to put a penny in the delightfully painted clamshell Mutoscopes.

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2012

What is a Mutoscope?  Why did I have to go play with them every year?  The Mutoscope is a hand-cranked entertainment machine that works like a giant flipbook. When I was a kid, I tried to build a device like it, but always had trouble getting it to work.

2012

Each machine carries instructions and extensive patent information on a plate on the front of the machine.  The instructions are simple: "Push Penny in Slot Then Turn Crank to the Right."

2010

When you put your penny in the slot, a light comes on.  You see a photo on a card.  When you turn the crank, each photo snaps forward, revealing the next one.  The sequence of photos gives the illusion of motion.  The cool thing is, you can turn the crank as fast or as slow as you like.  You can't go backwards.  Here we see Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand in a scene from a Keystone comedy.  Someone with good eyes could probably tell which one.

2010

And here we see a scene from a Tom Mix western, probably one of his early Selig Polyscope productions.

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, Albert Allis Hopkins, ed.

from Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, edited by Albert Allis Hopkins:
"The 'mutoscope' is compact, and the pictures are large. It is not any larger than the cover of a sewing machine. The enlarged bromide prints, measuring four by six inches, are mounted in close consecutive order around the cylinder and extend out like the leaves of a book, as shown in the illustration. In the operation of the mutoscope the spectator has the performance entirely under his own control by turning a crank which is placed conveniently at hand, and may make the operation as quick or as slow as he desires, and can stop the machine at any particular picture at will.  Each picture is momentarily held in front of the lens by the action of a slot attached to the roof of the box, which allows the pictures to slip by in much the same way as the thumb is used upon the leaves of a book."

The Mutoscope was invented by William Kennedy Laurie (WKL) Dickson, who had led the Edison team that developed the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph.   The Mutoscope and its accompanying camera, the Mutograph, were carefully designed to work around Thomas Edison's patents on motion picture devices. 

How did I get interested in the Mutoscope?  Several times when I was young I took a book out of the Anza Branch Library that explained how movies work.  I can't remember the title.  I tried to make several of the pre-cinema devices in the section on early moving picture devices. 

The Young Folk's Cyclopædia of Games and Sports by John Denison Champlin and Arthur Elmore Bostwick, 1890

The Thaumatrope (from the Greek for "wonder turner") is a card, often disk-shaped, with a string tied through a hole on each side.  On each face of the card is a part of a picture, most famously a bird on one side and a cage, upside down relative to the bird, on the other.  The person playing with the Thaumatrope takes a string in each hand and spins the card rapidly.  Persistence of vision merges the images together so the bird appears to be in the cage, or, in the example above, the rider appears to be on the horse.  This was a popular toy in the Nineteenth Century.  There is some disagreement about whether it was invented by a Frenchman or an Englishman.

I used to make Thaumatropes with my daughter. Kids enjoy them and I recommend making them as a good way to pass a rainy afternoon.

The Young Folk's Cyclopædia of Games and Sports by John Denison Champlin and Arthur Elmore Bostwick, 1890

Zoetropes were harder.  There are two basic types.  Each has a series of drawings meant to represent phases of an action.

Scientific American / New Series, Volume 20, Issue 14, April 3, 1869

One type of Zoetrope has the images on the face of a disk.  The disk may have slots or notches between the images.  The disk is rotated in front of a mirror.  Looking though the slots intermittently interrupts our view of the images and persistence of vision allows us to see the images as if they are moving.

This can also be done with a second disk in front of the one with the images.  The front disk has the slots and it rotates in the opposite direction from the one with the images.  I built one of these as a project for university class.  I should have taken a photo.

The Story of the Motion Picture: 65 B.C. to 1920 A.D. By Ben Jehudah Lubschez

The other type of Zoetrope, also called a Phenakistoscope or Daedaleum (I love these names), has the images on a strip of paper lining the inside of a drum.  There is a slot toward the rim of the drum above each image.  Looking through the slots of the rotating drum also gives the illusion of motion.

When my daughter was young, I purchased a toy drum-type Zoetrope and we drew strips to view in it.  Just recently, my wife took her class to a field trip at the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco's Presidio.  They created Zoetrope strips. 

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, edited by Albert Allis Hopkins

The methods above used drawing or posed photographs to recreate motion.  In 1878, San Francisco photographer Eadweard Muybridge used a series of cameras to photograph the stages of motion as it was happening. This took place down the Peninsula from where I lived, at the Stanford Farm, the future home of Stanford University.  I found this fascinating.  I wanted to reanimate Muybridge's images and I wanted to create my own, but I could never gather enough functioning cameras.  Muybridge went on to do studies of many kinds of motion, and used a Zoetrope to present them. 

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, edited by Albert Allis Hopkins.

German inventor Ottomar Anschutz created the Electrical Tachyscope in 1887 and demonstrated it at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  It used an early form of strobe light to achieve intermittent motion. 

from Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, edited by Albert Allis Hopkins:
"The apparatus is the invention of Ottamar Anschuetz, of Lissa, Prussia. A special camera was used, adapted to take a number of photographs in quick succession. The instrument for displaying the pictures is called the "electrical tachyscope." It consists of an iron wheel of sufficient diameter to hold an entire series of positive prints on the periphery. The wheel is arranged upon a rigid standard, and provided with a series of pins which register exactly with the picture. Upon the standard behind the wheel is located a box containing a spiral Geissler tube which is connected with the terminals of a Ruhmkorff coil. The primary coil is provided with a contact maker and breaker adapted to be operated by the pins projecting from the wheel, so that every time a picture comes before the Geissler tube it is illuminated by an electrical discharge through the tube. This discharge, being instantaneous, shows each picture in an apparently fixed position. These pictures succeed each other so rapidly that the retinal image of one picture is retained until the next is superimposed upon it, thereby giving to the observer the sense of a continuous image in constant motion."

French artist and inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud created the Praxinoscope, which improved on the Zoetrope by replacing the slots with a set of mirrors in the middle of the drum. The video was shot at the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.  The Musee Mechanique is a wonderful place to visit to play with old amusement machines. 

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, edited by Albert Allis Hopkins.

Reynaud went farther than the Praxinoscope or the Zoetrope with their simple strips of drawings.  He created the Théâtre Optique, which used a long chain of drawings on glass, along with projected backgrounds, to create beautiful animated cartoons which could be presented to large audiences.

from Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography, edited by Albert Allis Hopkins:
 "Up to the time of the invention of this theater, the apparatus that produced the synthesis of the successive phases of an action were limited to reproduction upon a very small scale, which can only be enjoyed by a limited group. The object of the optical theater was to provide an apparatus for the reproduction of a series of actions upon a considerable scale. The continuity of the image obtained by the praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by M. Reynaud, had not up to this time been realized by any projecting apparatus. The effect is produced by using a crystalloid band upon which the images are painted as represented at A in our engraving. The operator can revolve it in one direction or the other by means of two reels. The images pass before the lantern, B, and are projected by the aid of the objective, C, upon an inclined mirror, M, which projects them upon the transparent screen, E. Another projection lantern, B, causes the appearance on the screen of the scene, amid which appear the characters, which change their posture according as the painted band, A, is revolved by the operator."

Inspired by Reynaud, I drew a couple of animated films on strips of paper.  If they still exist, I should try to scan them and animate them.

Reynaud premiered the Théâtre Optique in 1892 to much acclaim.  In 1893, a team working for Thomas Edison demonstrated the vertical Kinetoscope, which allowed an individual to watch a movie.  In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrated a projector which allowed a crowd of people to watch a movie.  The Théâtre Optique was quickly forgotten,  In 1910, Reynaud threw his equipment and most of his animations into the Seine.

 Despite sad stories like Reynaud's, I get a lot of pleasure out of looking at pre-cinema, and sometimes trying to recreate it.  If you catch kids in the right mood, it can help them understand how movies work.

This post is part of the Classic Movie Ice Cream Social Blogathon, hosted by Fritzi at Movies Silently (http://moviessilently.com/2016/05/20/the-classic-movie-ice-cream-social-is-here/).  Thank you to Fritzi for all the hard work.  Thank you to everyone who visited and I encourage you to read and comment on as many posts as you can.  Bloggers love comments.  

This post is my second blogathon post of 2016 and my 42nd since 2007.  This is my 24th blogathon.    This page has a list of all my blogathon posts.  

 

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Coincidentally, the first day of this blogathon is the 125th anniversary of the first public demonstration of the horizontal Kinetoscope by a team of Thomas Edison's workers led by WKL Dickson.  On 20-May-1891, in West Orange, New Jersey, they played this film, later called the "Dickson Greeting," to the National Federation of Women's Clubs.  The Kinetoscope required further development, which came to fruition in 1893.