The animated image, and Emile Reynaud
In the 19th century, the animated image fascinated everyone. Animation machines were built on the phenomenon of persistence of vision demonstrated at the beginning of the century, which in other words was the eye’s ability to retain an idea of an image which had already been seen, and then to associate it with the image that was currently being seen.
From 1840 onwards, people started to project moving images. In 1853, Jules Duboscq, a French optician, came up with a machine which could project stroboscopic discs. In 1869, Englishman Thomas Ross submitted a patent for the Wheel of Life, projecting images from a phenakistoscope with the help of a magic lantern. Yet, we owe the perfection of these systems to Emile Reynaud.
In 1864, Reynaud, a precision engineer, met Abbé Moigno, and through him he discovered magic lanterns. Reynaud fell in love with these devices. Noticing that the movement of the slits darkened the images and colours, he decided to improve this mechanism by replacing the slits with a series of mirrors arranged in a crown at the centre of the device. On 30 August 1877, Reynaud submitted a patent for the praxinoscope (from the Greek praxis: for action, and skopein: to examine).
Enthralled with the process, Reynaud did not stop there. In 1879, he built his praxinoscope inside a box equipped with a slit, which made it possible to observe moving images against a background reflected onto a two-way mirror, the Praxinoscope Theatre. After this followed a combination of the praxinoscope, with a magic lantern, the Projection Praxinoscope. In 1888, the Optical Theatre, a larger model of the Projection Praxinoscope, was born. In 1892, Reynaud signed a contract with the Musée Grevin. His illuminated pantomimes were very successful for a number of years.