Filoscope -- July 29, 2017

La Nature, 23-July-1898

Henry William Short improved on the flip book by adding a metal holder.  David Devant, shown in the movie in the video, was a magician associate of John Neville Maskelyne.  The movie was by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company

Please excuse the poor quality of my translation from La Nature, 23-July-1898:

The Filoscope. - Everyone has seen small pocket cinematographs in the form of notebooks. It was enough to flip through them with much practice to obtain curious effects. But flipping certainly presented great difficulties. The new arrangement of the small device called the Filoscope that we are describing today will allow everyone to run the successive blocks of images quickly and well. The device consists of a specially shaped housing with both ends open. The block of the plate connected to the end is controlled by a rod and pivots around the axes in the interior of the casing. It is enough to turn the stem very slowly by pressing to see the flipping to be done clearly and the images are followed with regular intervals, which gives the successive images the real animation of the life. The shape of the case is chosen in such a way that the block of proofs, when finished reforms itself in order to be able to play properly when it is to be used again. - The "Filoscope" is of English manufacture and the concessionaire of this article for France is Mr. Kratz-Boussac, 1-5, rue Saint-Laurent, in Paris.