In 1834, two years after the phenakistoscope was invented in Europe, British mathematician William George Horner created his own version of the optical illusion. The Daedalum, or ‘wheel of the Devil’, used a cylindrical viewing drum containing a strip of sequenced pictures viewable through thin slits. When rotated it created the illusion of motion, and it became known as the zoetrope.
Over 40 years later, in 1877, French showman and lantern painter Charles-Émile Reynaud developed the praxinoscope, replacing the narrow viewing slots in Horner’s design with an inner circle of mirrors that more brightly reflected the pictures and let more than one person view the gliding images.
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
On display until
16 February 2031
ACMI: Gallery 1
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
Curatorial section
The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Pictures → MI-02. Play and Illusion → MI-02-C02