Phenakistoscopes, The Animated GIFs of the Victorian Era (1833)

Nowadays, we share our favorite emoticons and viral animated GIFs with our friends through instant messengers and social media in our ...

Nowadays, we share our favorite emoticons and viral animated GIFs with our friends through instant messengers and social media in our smartphones. But in the Victorian Era, children and adults alike were entertained by a popular parlor toy called the "phenakistoscopes."

Considered as one of the earliest forms of animation and modern cinema, the device was basically operated by spinning the cardboard disc and view the reflection of the image in a mirror through a series of moving slits. Because of the distortion and flicker, the spinning disc creates the illusion that the image was moving from women dancing with animals leaping in one continuous loop.

Invented independently in 1832 by Joseph Plateau in Brussels, Belgium and Simon von Stampfer in Berlin, Germany, they experimented with optical illusions, photography, and image projections to make their animations even more impressive.

Although Plateau was a physicist, his painter-illustrator father wanted him to follow his footsteps by having him enrolled at the Academy of Design in Brussels. Even though Plateau eventually ended up pursuing science instead, he retained an interest in art and design that proved useful when creating the Phenakistoscope. His original designs were hand-painted by himself, an example of the frequent intersection of Victorian artistry with experimental scientific media that defined the period. Coincidentally, German mathematician von Stampfer developed a near-identical device called Stroboscope a week after Plateau.

Their devices became so popular that it was mass-produced and marketed under names as Phantasmascope, Fantoscope and "Magic Wheel." Similar competitors had their own products as well like the Mclean's Optical Illusions or Magic Panorama in 1833 with illustrations ranging from simple moving figures to more complicate, intricate scenes in color.