Zoetrope

Zoetrope

The word "Zoetrope" came from Greek origins, it comes from the Greek words "zoe" which means life and "tropos" which means to turn.

A zoetrope is one of the many pre-film animations devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of images showing progressive phases of that motion.

A zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically into the sides. On the inside of the cylinder is a band of images from a set of sequence pictures. As you spin the cylinder you look through the the slits and across from where they are looking they will see a rapid succession producing the illusion of motion.

The basic drum-like form of the zoetrope was created in 1833/44 by a British mathematician William George Horner. Horner's revolving drum had viewing slits between the pictures. He called it "daedaleum"

For displaying moving images, zoetropes were displaced by more advanced technology, notably film and later television. However, in the early 1970s, Sega used a mechanism similar to an ancient zoetrope in order to create electro-mechanical arcade games that would resemble later first-person video game.