The Zoetrope

The Zoetrope was a very primitive animation device, created in 180AD by Tin Huan under the name of 'chao hua chich kuan', it was a very basic device which was used as a way of warding off spirits, rather than entertainment, and the way in which it worked was not completely understood.

It wasnt until its reinvention in 1833 by William Horner (the mathematician) that this device (renamed Daedalum, meaning the wheel of the devil) began to be understood, however despite the reinvention and bringing into the forefront of animation, it wasnt a very successful device and wasnt popular until the 1860's when it was patented in America by William Lincoln and in Britain by Milton Bradley, where it was given the current name Zoetrope.

The Zoetrope was created shortly before the device created by Plateau, though both devices were incredibly similar, utilizing a circular drum as the core of the device. The Zoetrope itself works by having a circular drum with slits in the top of the drum, these will be looked through like windows. The drum itself is fitted to a mount which allows the drum to spin 360 degrees. a paper or card insert with several still images will then be placed on the inside of the drum, when spun at speed looking through the window it will give the illusion of motion.

The Zoetrope however was not a very successful animation device, partically because of the Phenakitoscope being released so closely and as such it was in the shadows until 1860 when it had a boom due to patenting. There has been many different forms of Zoetrope and spin offs from the original device all varying the method used to display and make it easier to view. One good example of this was the use of a centre pole which had mirrors attached to it, doing this meant that it would reflect the images off the paper in the middle and removed the need for viewing windows.

In modern days the Zoetrope is pretty much extinct, it is a very impractical way to animate due to its limited frames available, increasing the number of images means either scaling the device up, taking more space and money, or making the images smaller, which will result in harder to view animations as the sizes are reduced.

There has been some modern day Zoetropes created using modern engineering and digitalisation to create a device with no limit to frames, this works by instead of using paper using tv screens which each displayed different images that would swap when they were used this meant much longer productions could be created, however the creation of this modern spin was a gimic more than any form of evolution.

Overall evaluating the device itself it was a very old and interesting attempt at a animation device, mainly used as a source of entertainment but its value as anything else is to say very lacking due to its frame limitation. However the size of this animation device does mean however it was both affordable and usable in homes.

Below is an example of a zoetrope in use (thanks to youtube):