Joseph Plateau and the phenakitoscope

(14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883)

Joseph Plateau was the guy who invented the phenakitoscope, this is a form of animation and a illusion, they are quite easy to make if you wanted to make one but I wont talk about how to make them. talk about the history of J

oseph and the Phenakitoscope.

he first thought of the idea to make such a device in 1829, he started planning it, how he was going to make it, 10 years later which was 1839, a long time he waited to start planning it, but two years after 1839 he invented it.

What does the device do exactly?


it gave an illusion effect that the still images or drawings where moving, you draw a couple of still movements and then you put them together around each other facing outwards in a circle kind of shape,

you get some kind of piece of paper and you make a whole in it, you do this because you spin the phenakitoscope and it looks like it is moving throughout when you are spinning it, such as the dancing couple above in the gif, this is the kind of effect it gives.

but in 1832, seven years before he invented the phenakitoscope he invented the strovoscope, which was pretty much the thing but an earlier version of it, kind of like a prototype of what was to come, something he could improve on