Historical and Contemporary Animation 3 - The Thaumatrope

A Thaumatrope is a form of entertainment mostly used during the 1900s among children. It made use of a disk with two strings attached to either side, and when spun around it gave the illusion of the two images on either side of the disc blending together. The inventor of this device is unsure, although it is usually credited to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget. In 2012 it was reported that there had been a prehistoric Thaumatrope had been discovered in a cave in France. This device is a crude but effective form of illusion, but I don't believe it's a useful technique for animation since its basically only two frames being flipped back and forth to give an illusion of those to items merging, not moving.