zoetrope

optical device

Also known as: daedalum

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Last updated

July 15, 2026

Quick Summary

The zoetrope is an optical toy that creates the illusion of movement. It consists of a cylinder with slits around its circumference. Inside the cylinder, figures are arranged on a band. When the cylinder spins, viewing the figures through the slits makes them appear to be in motion. This device operates on the principle of persistence of vision, where the human eye perceives a series of still images as continuous movement if shown in rapid succession. Invented by William George Horner in 1834, the zoetrope was an early step in the development of animation and motion pictures.123

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animation
Early history
…William George Horner invented the zoetrope, a rotating drum lined by a band of pictures that could be changed. The Frenchman Émile Reynaud in 1876 adapted the principle into a form that could be projected before a theatrical audience. Reynaud became not only animation’s first entrepreneur but, with his gorgeously…
Read More
…William George Horner invented the zoetrope, a rotating drum lined by a band of pictures that could be changed. The Frenchman Émile Reynaud in 1876 adapted the principle into a form that could be projected before a theatrical audience. Reynaud became not only animation’s first entrepreneur but, with his gorgeously…
Read More

History of film
Origins
…inside a rotating drum (the zoetrope, c. 1834). Then, in 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a French painter, perfected the positive photographic process known as daguerreotype, and that same year the English scientist William Henry Fox Talbot successfully demonstrated a negative photographic process that theoretically allowed unlimited positive prints to be produced…
Read More
…inside a rotating drum (the zoetrope, c. 1834). Then, in 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a French painter, perfected the positive photographic process known as daguerreotype, and that same year the English scientist William Henry Fox Talbot successfully demonstrated a negative photographic process that theoretically allowed unlimited positive prints to be produced…
Read More

motion-picture technology
History
…the popular parlor toy the zoetrope “wheel of life,” a rotating drum that induced an illusion of movement from drawn or painted pictures (see Figure 1). Meanwhile, Émile Reynaud in France was projecting sequences of drawn pictures onto a screen using his Praxinoscope, in which revolving mirrors and an oil-lamp…
Read More
…the popular parlor toy the zoetrope “wheel of life,” a rotating drum that induced an illusion of movement from drawn or painted pictures (see Figure 1). Meanwhile, Émile Reynaud in France was projecting sequences of drawn pictures onto a screen using his Praxinoscope, in which revolving mirrors and an oil-lamp…
Read More