"On This Day" In Engineering History

On this day in engineering history, April 23, 1867, William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, a machine that shows animated pictures by spinning a drum with a strip of drawings mounted inside. In this example, the zoetrope depicts the journey of a horse and rider.

The zoetrope was invented in 1834 by William Horner, a British mathematician. He called his creation the daedalum, a Latin word for "wheel of the devil". The zoetrope didn't become popular until the 1860s, however, when it was patented by William F. Lincoln, an American developer who named his toy the zoetrope. The term "zoetrope" comes from the Greek "zoe", meaning "life"; and "trope", meaning "turn". Consequently, the zoetrope is sometimes referred to as "wheel of life".

In a zoetrope, pictures are drawn on a strip which is set around the inside of the bottom-third of a metal drum. The drum is mounted on a spindle so that it can be spun. Slits are cut in the upper section of the drum, and viewers looking through the slits can see the cartoon strip form a moving image. The faster the drum is spun, the smoother the image that is produced. The cylindrical shape of the zoetrope enables several people at the same time to view the moving pictures. In this way, the zoetrope is an improvement over the single-spectator phenakistiscope, an earlier invention with a spinning disc of images mounted vertically on a handle with slits for viewing.

Milton Bradley, the American game pioneer, was granted a British patent for the zoetrope in in 1867 and eventually popularized the toy with nineteenth-century audiences. In more recent times, linear zoetropes have become popular public displays. Linear zoetropes consist of an opaque screen with thin vertical slits. The animation is viewed by moving quickly past. Subway systems are particularly popular places for displaying animations via zoetropes. In September 1980, a linear zoetrope called "Masstransiscope" was installed on a subway platform in Brooklyn, New York. Subway riders who moved past the display could view a motion picture. In 2001, a tunnel in the Atlanta subway system featured a linear zoetrope whose motion-picture was about twenty seconds long. Linear zoetropes also began to appear in other subway systems across North America, as well as in Europe and Asia.

Here are some pictures of a zoetrope I constructed using a pre-printed animation strip, a CD and some chapstick:

First, I used a template from one of the links below and cut out the animation strip.

Next, I used the chapstick as the axle for my zoetrope.

Finally, I taped my animation to the CD-chapstick base and - voila! My own personal pre-YouTube video! It had to be spun pretty quickly to get any sense of animation, but for about 5 seconds I was entertained.

Here are some links that explain how to make your own zoetrope:

http://www.groeg.de/puzzles/pdf/zoetrope.pdf

http://brightbytes.com/collection/zoetrope.html

http://www.instructables.com/id/ELHBPVD1D5EP2866EE

Resources:

http://courses.ncssm.edu/GALLERY/collections/toys/html/exhibit10.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~s-herbert/zoet.htm

http://www.privatelessons.net/2d/sample/m01_04.html