flipbooks, crazy names, movies. . . and the people who created them
Think about it: every image in a flipbook is still. it may be a drawing of a house, a picture of a butterfly, or a picture of a dinosaur, but every image on every page is still on a sheet of paper, not moving at all. however, when you flip through the pages quickly, the images appear to be moving. this is an illusion, of course, but it’s quite amazing how much they look like moving pictures. now think about this: every movie you see in the cinema, every tv show you watch, every youtube video, every iphone video, every video game, even every imax movie works on the same basic principle as a flipbook. moving images are all an illusion created by displaying still images very quickly. and this illusion, of still images looking like moving images, is due to a fancy term known as persistence of vision.
You are reading: Moving picture flip books
what is persistence of vision? is the phenomenon that occurs when the eye and brain see two or more images very quickly, one after the other. your eyes have the ability to combine these images so that the brain “sees” them as smooth movement. That’s exactly what your eyes and brain do when you watch a movie, an iPhone video, or a flipbook. they are blending individual images to give the illusion of real movement. remember, this works best when each image is similar to the next.
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Let’s take a look at the history of moving images. (Moving images are sometimes called “animation” – (other types of moving images include “movies”, “films”, “cartoons” and “videos”). It is a fascinating story involving photographers, inventors , extremely creative artists and engineers, and scientists, and each learned important lessons and principles from the previous ones.
The earliest devices that created the illusion of moving images and animations were small mechanical machines that were shaped like a cylinder or circular drum, like a tiny merry-go-round. The inventors pasted still images inside the drum, and when it was turned with a crank and viewed at a certain angle, the images blended together to appear as if they were moving. The very first invention of this kind was the phenakistoscope (how’s that for a crazy name!?), invented in 1829 by a Belgian named Joseph Plateau. A few years later, the daedaleum (later called a zoetrope) was invented by William Homer, and it allowed more than one person to view the moving images at the same time. Zoetrope means “wheel of life.” How amazing and magical it must have been to see moving images for the first time. (Maybe it was similar to the way you felt when you saw a flipbook work for the first time.) Another moving image invention was the praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by Charles–Émile Reynaud. It was similar to a zoetrope, but used mirrors to simplify the viewing process.
The first flipbook appeared in 1868 when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name kineograph (Latin for “moving picture”). His kineograph was the first form of animation to use a linear sequence of images – like a booklet – rather than circular drums. From 1875 to 1900 several pioneers of moving images made 
amazing discoveries and created incredible inventions. One of the greatest names in the history of the moving image is Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was an eccentric genius. For years he had been a very successful landscape photographer, but in the early 1870’s he invented a way to rig many cameras so that they would take similar photos in rapid order. Then when the photos were put together to be viewed quickly one after the other they created moving images.
An extraordinarily creative French inventor was Etienne-Jules Marey who in 1882 invented the first portable movie camera – but it wasn’t shaped like a camera at all – it was shaped like a rifle and it took rapid photographs that could be turned into moving images. It was a truly brilliant invention. Muybridge and Marey met in Paris to share ideas, and Muybridge kept inventing better and better cameras and soon worked closely with
Thomas Edison to help invent the first movie camera and an early viewing device called a Kinetoscope. At about the same time, the Lumière brothers in France were also working to invent movie cameras and projectors, and it was they who showed the very first movie to a public audience. The year was 1895. Movies were born!
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Keep in mind that in the early years of moving images, ANY MOVIE was amazing to see, whether it was simply 15 seconds of a man walking down the street or a train pulling into a station. An ordinary event was amazing when it was shown as the illusion of a movie. But soon audiences wanted more. Perhaps you’ve heard of George Meliés? (Have you seen the movie “Hugo”?) Meliés was the first filmmaker to use special effects. Movies grew up very quickly in the early twentieth century. Improvements and creative energies that followed the early pioneers have never stopped, from the invention of adding sound to movies in 1927, to zoom lenses, to incredible special effects. But remember . . .
. . . A simple flipbook works on the same basic principle as more advanced movies and videos. the main difference is that in movies and videos you are looking at images of light that are projected or transmitted onto a screen, and in a flipbook you are looking at images that are printed on small pages of paper. Of course, with a flipbook you can hold the movie in your hands and control it yourself.
If you’re interested in learning more about flipbooks and the history of moving pictures, you may want to go online and research the inventions and inventors we’ve covered in this story. And here are more crazy names, motion picture types, and people to search for: thaumatrope, zoopraxiscope, time-lapse photography, stop-action, claymation, george eastman, walt disney.
copyright 2014 fliptomania, inc.
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