A phenakistoscope is a device made up of two circular pieces of card- one is a plain disk with an eye hole in it and the other is a disk with different images printed on it. When the disk with pictures is spun and viewed through the eye hole, the image appears to move. This is because the images are moving too quickly for the eye to pick up on (the eye holds onto an image for a 25th of a second, called the persistence of vision), viewing through an eyehole slows it down and gives the impression of movement.
The phenakistoscope is credited to Joseph Plateau (1801-1883), a Belgian physicist who focused on the eyes and light. Although Plateau is credited with the invention, other scientists at the time were studying the same principles behind it which go back as far as Ancient Greece with the mathematician Euclid and Sir Issac Newton. Plateau was influenced by the work of Michael Faraday and Peter Mark Roget. Roget was influenced by the kaleidoscope and worked on ways to improve it which lead to him creating a similar device to the phenakistoscope- Plateau took this device and improved it and created the device recognised as the phenakistoscope.
The phenakistoscope is credited to Joseph Plateau (1801-1883), a Belgian physicist who focused on the eyes and light. Although Plateau is credited with the invention, other scientists at the time were studying the same principles behind it which go back as far as Ancient Greece with the mathematician Euclid and Sir Issac Newton. Plateau was influenced by the work of Michael Faraday and Peter Mark Roget. Roget was influenced by the kaleidoscope and worked on ways to improve it which lead to him creating a similar device to the phenakistoscope- Plateau took this device and improved it and created the device recognised as the phenakistoscope.
The phenakistoscope has been used in modern times by a Japanese band called Sour to make a music video for their song “Life is Music”. They used 189 disks made from their CDs to make it.