Science is Fun Fridays!
As a follow up to yesterday's viewing of the Academy Museum Gala, today we're going to look into one of the exhibitions: The Path to Cinema.
Author and documentary photographer, Richard Balzer, has been collecting pre-cinematic devices for over 40 years. Some pieces date back as far as the 17th century.
"The cinematic experience we know today evolved from a long tradition of optical amusements and devices of wonder: from shadow play, peepshows, magic lanterns, zoetropes and praxinoscopes to the Cinématographe Lumiére, the world's first successful film projector."
Bull's Eye Magic Lantern
A device that can project images onto a wall or screen had been drawn by Leonardo DaVinci nearly two centuries before it actually appeared. Dutch physicist, Christiaan Huygens made one and wrote a book about it in 1658. The first written record of a show produced by one occurred in 1665, put on by Danish mathematician, Thomas Walgensten.
Steam Driven Praxinoscope
Rotated by an oil burner and two steam powered pulleys, the colorful cartoon strips spin and give the sense of motion. A successor of the zoetrope, it replaced the narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors and provided a brighter and less distorted picture.
Phenakistoscope Animation Disc
The original gif! This created a fluent illusion of movement in a short continuous loop.
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