William George Horner 1786 - 1837

Horner born 1786 was a very prestigious British mathematician, born to a upper class family in Bristol, in his childhood he was incredibly bright becoming an assistant master at his school, Kingswood. Within 4 small years by the young age of just 20 he had risen to become the Head of the school. However Horner being incredibly passionate about sciences left this post after just 3 years to establish his own school, heavily focusing on mathematics.

Horner had an incredibly sucessful career, writting extensively on a broad range of mathematic theories, (one of which has become a mathematical standard known as the 'Horner Method' referring to an algebraic equation) he also however like Joseph Plateau he was very intrigued in imagry, and more specifically optics, which he had wrote several successful theories. This could have been seen as the start to his journey on creating one of the founding devices which was the basis to modern day animation. He was a regular writer in the 'Philosophical Magazine' on optics and theories relating to illusions.

Some of his most successful pieces of work however were:

• Horner's Method
• A Tribute of a friend - a very moving poem
• Natural Magic - a leaflet on optics

Horner is often thought to be the inventor of the Zoetrope however, this is infact incorrect the most primitive form of the zoetrope was created in 180AD however it is Horner that 'reinvented' the device modernising it and bringing it back into the spot light.

My Thoughts?
Though Horner was a very bright individual i feel his achievements in life are often overlooked, by the age of 20 he was a successful individual that was head of a very prestigious school, this alone was a great achievement, likewise being a regular writer on mathematics and creating a algebraic method was equally as brilliant. These are often in the shadow of his reinvention of the zoetrope however, which was infact nothing special, nor was it anything new. For this reason i feel from an animation perspective he was viewed in a better light than he should have. Unlike Joseph that created a brand new concept and began the research and theory around persistence of vision (which is still in use to this day), i feel Horner was not very important to the animation industry.

Importance
Horners importance is up to debate, it can be argued he did not make a new animation device, nor did he have any such input into very important theories revolving around animation or how optics work. For that reason he could be seen he had no importance and should not be classed as a great inventor. However on the other hand he did successfully get a bigger audience to notice animation and get onboard with the movement to experiment and research optics, for this it could be said many people learned about optics and so it helped drive the concept forward. As such this alone cannot be seen as a important enough event to make him on par with Joseph Plateau. It is undeniable that Joseph was more influential within the animation movement, and that his work contributed to far more.

Away from animation however Horner was an incredibly important figure within science and mathematics of his time, and created many theories which were the basis for more advanced or evolutionary concepts which has shaped modern day mathematics.