Optical toys form a group of devices with some entertainment value combined with a scientific, optical nature. Many of these were also known as "philosophical toys" when they were developed in the 19th century.
People must have experimented with optical phenomena since prehistoric times and played with objects that influenced the experience of light, color and shadow. In the 16th century some experimental optical entertainment - for instance camera obscura demonstrations - were part of the cabinets of curiosities that emerged at royal courts. Since the 17th century, optical tabletop instruments such as the compound microscope and telescope were used for parlour entertainment or salon presentations in richer households.
Other, larger devices - such as peep shows - were usually exhibited by travelling showmen at fairs.
The phenakistiscope, zoetrope, praxinoscope and flip book a.o. are often seen as precursors of film, leading to the invention of cinema at the end of the 19th century. In the 21st century, this narrow teleological vision was questioned and the individual qualities of these media gained renewed attention of researchers in the fields of the history of film, science, technology and art. The new digital media raised questions about our knowledge of media history. The tactile qualities of optical toys that allow viewers to study and play with the moving image in their own hands, seem more attractive in a time when digital transformation makes the moving image less tangible. [1]
Several philosophical toys were developed through scientific experimentation, then turned into scientific amusements that demonstrated new ideas and theories in the fields of optics, physics, electricity, mechanics, etc. and ended up as toys for children. [2]
date | name | inventor(s) | type/function | note |
---|---|---|---|---|
n/a | Camera obscura | n/a | projection | a natural phenomenon, applied with lens since around 1550, portable box since early 17th century |
730 BCE (circa) | Lens | n/a | burning glass? | the function of the oldest known lens, the Nimrud lens, is unclear (it may only have been used for decoration), lenses were probably seldom used as a magnifying glass or as glasses before the 13th century |
100 BCE (circa) | Chinese magic mirror | n/a | projection | probably introduced centuries or thousands of years before they became popular during the Han dynasty |
0 (circa) | Prism | n/a | dispersion | Seneca noted that a prism could form the same colors as the rainbow |
150 (circa) | Newton disc / color-top (chameleon top) | Ptolemy | additive optical color mixing | first known description by Ptolemy, later falsely attributed to Isaac Newton |
850 (circa) | reading stone | Abbas ibn Firnas? | magnification | not regularly used before circa 1000 |
1437? | Peep box / raree show | Leon Battista Alberti? | especially popular from the 17th to the 19th century | |
1485 (circa)? | Perspective anamorphosis | Leonardo da Vinci? | anamorphosis | |
1500s | Tabula scalata | n/a | extant copies from late 16th century, also referred to in literature of the time (including works by Shakespeare) | |
1500s? | Pleasurable spectacles (faceted and coloured glass lenses) | described and illustrated in I. Prevost's La Première partie des subtiles et plaisantes inventions (1584), [3] but the distortion of vision when looking through transparent objects must have been known much earlier (probably long before the use of reading stones) | ||
1600s | Mirror anamorphosis | n/a | anamorphosis | reached Europe around 1620, possibly from China via Constantinople [4] |
1608 | Telescope | Hans Lippershey? Zacharias Janssen? Jacob Metius? | ||
1620s? | Compound microscope | Cornelis Drebbel? | ||
>1630s | Mirrored room | multiplication | a room lined with 200 mirrors in the palace of the king of Armenia was described in 1647 by Adam Olearius [5] | |
1638 | Perspective glass | Jean François Niceron? | hidden image | a viewing tube with a faceted lens that brings together selective parts of a picture into one composite image |
1650s | Perspective box | viewing box with a lens, false perspective painted on multiple planes in the interior of the box | ||
1659 | Magic lantern | Christiaan Huygens | projection | |
1730? | Zograscope perspective views | n/a | 3D | known in France since 1730 as "optique", it became known as the "zograscope" in England since 1745 |
1736 | Solar microscope | Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit | projection | |
1770s? | Chinese fireworks or Feux pyriques | n/a | animated light effects | |
1817 | Kaleidoscope | David Brewster | ||
1822 | Polyorama Panoptique | Pierre Seguin? | ||
1825 | Thaumatrope | William Henry Fitton? | introduced by John Ayrton Paris | |
1827 | Kaleidophone | Charles Wheatstone | ||
1829 | Anorthoscope | Joseph Plateau | anamorphosis | marketed shortly since 1836 |
1833-01 | Phénakisticope | Joseph Plateau, Simon Stampfer | animation | |
1833 | Stereoscope | Sir Charles Wheatstone | 3D | mirror version developed by Wheatstone around 1832, presented/published in 1838, prismatic version probably developed simultaneously by Wheatstone, prismatic/lenticular version introduced in 1849 by David Brewster and popularized with production by Jules Duboscq since 1850 |
1852 | Anaglyph 3D | Wilhelm Rollmann | 3D | |
1858-04 | Kaleidoscopic colour-top | John Gorham | ||
1860 | Alethoscope | Carlo Ponti | 3D | further developed into the Megalethoscope |
1864 | Spectropia | J. H. Brown | afterimage | |
1866-12 | Zoetrope | William Ensign Lincoln | animation | similar devices suggested and exhibited since 1833, now with exchangeable strips |
1868 (circa) | The Optic Wonder or Creator of Form | John Gorham | 3D | a small metal strip or crystal shape forming the half of a contour image is spun around fast to appear as a full solid 3D object, marketed by Stereoscopic Company (London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co.) [6] [7] |
1868 | Flip book | John Barnes Linnett | animation | |
1877 | Praxinoscope | Charles-Émile Reynaud | animation | |
1894 | Mutoscope | William Kennedy Dickson, Herman Casler | moving pictures | |
1896 | Kinora | Auguste and Louis Lumière | moving pictures | |
1906 | Scanimation | Alexander S. Spiegel | animation | originally marketed as magical moving pictures, adapted as scanimation since 2006 |
1921 | Ombro-Cinéma | Saussine | animation | |
1939 | View-Master | William Gruber | 3D | |
1952 | Lenticular pictures | Victor Anderson | animation | originally invented in 1898 as autostereogram, now popularized as changing/moving pictures |
1980 | Mandelbrot set visualizations | Benoit Mandelbrot | ||
1991 | Magic Eye | Tom Baccei, Cheri Smith | 3D / hidden image | based on random dot stereogram techniques that have been known since 1919,[ citation needed ] further developed by Béla Julesz and Christopher Tyler |
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière and Louis Jean Lumière, were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their Cinématographe motion picture system and the short films they produced between 1895 and 1905, which places them among the earliest filmmakers.
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The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name lanterna magica, was an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates, one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a single lens inverts an image projected through it, slides were inserted upside down in the magic lantern, rendering the projected image correctly oriented.
Persistence of vision is the optical illusion that occurs when the visual perception of an object does not cease for some time after the rays of light proceeding from it have ceased to enter the eye. The illusion has also been described as "retinal persistence", "persistence of impressions", simply "persistence" and other variations. A very commonly given example of the phenomenon is the apparent fiery trail of a glowing coal or burning stick while it is whirled around in the dark.
A zoetrope is a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion, by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. A zoetrope is a cylindrical variant of the phénakisticope, an apparatus suggested after the stroboscopic discs were introduced in 1833. The definitive version of the zoetrope, with replaceable film picture film strips, was introduced as a toy by Milton Bradley in 1866 and became very successful.
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A stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image.
The phenakistiscope was the first widespread animation device that created a fluid illusion of motion. Dubbed Fantascope and Stroboscopische Scheiben by its inventors, it has been known under many other names until the French product name Phénakisticope became common. The phenakistiscope is regarded as one of the first forms of moving media entertainment that paved the way for the future motion picture and film industry. Similar to a GIF animation, it can only show a short continuous loop.
Precursors of film are concepts and devices that have much in common with the later art and techniques of cinema.
The telectroscope was the first conceptual model of a television or videophone system. The term was used in the 19th century to describe science-based systems of distant seeing.
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The Museum of Precinema is a museum in the Palazzo Angeli, Prato della Valle, Padua, Italy, related to the history of precinema, or precursors of film. It was created in 1998 to display the Minici Zotti Collection, in collaboration with the Comune di Padova. It also produces interactive touring exhibitions and makes valuable loans to other prestigious exhibitions such as 'Lanterne magique et film peint' at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris and the Museum of Cinema in Turin.
A projector or image projector is an optical device that projects an image onto a surface, commonly a projection screen. Most projectors create an image by shining a light through a small transparent lens, but some newer types of projectors can project the image directly, by using lasers. A virtual retinal display, or retinal projector, is a projector that projects an image directly on the retina instead of using an external projection screen.
François Dominique Séraphin was a French entertainer who developed and popularised shadow plays in France. The art form would go on to be copied across Europe.
The blow book, better known as a magic coloring book in modern variations, is a classic magic trick that has been performed for hundreds of years. It was most popular from the 16th to the 19th century, when variations of the concept were a staple of the book publishing trade. It has been referred to as the oldest example of a manufactured prop used for magic. It remains a common trick today, albeit mostly performed for children, preferably at birthday parties or other events due to the visual nature of the illusion.
Barrier-grid animation or picket-fence animation is an animation effect created by moving a striped transparent overlay across an interlaced image. The barrier-grid technique originated in the late 1890s, overlapping with the development of parallax stereography (Relièphographie) for 3D autostereograms. The technique has also been used for color-changing pictures, but to a much lesser extent.
François Marie Alfred Molteni was a Parisian scientist and optician.
An anorthoscope is a device that demonstrates an optical illusion that turns an anamorphic picture on a disc into a normal image by rotating it behind a counter-rotating disk with four radial slits. It was invented in 1829 by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, whose further studies of the principle led him to the 1832 invention of a stroboscopic animation that would become known as the phénakisticope.
La Lanterne magique, sold in the United States as The Magic Lantern and in Britain as The Magic Lantern, or the Bioscope in the Toy Shop, is a 1903 French silent trick film by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 520–524 in its catalogues.
For the history of animation after the development of celluloid film, see history of animation.