Stroboscopic Discs: An Explanation

Abstract

Originally published in Vienna in 1833, this text by Simon Stampfer offers a pivotal and substantial first-hand account of perceived principles underpinning the cinematographic “illusion of movement,” mechanisms used to achieve it and indications for potential development. The essay, which accompanied a set of Stroboscopic Discs and a viewer, can be paired with the previous article in this issue, Joseph Plateau’s almost contemporaneous letter outlining near identical discoveries. Together, these texts provide the foundation for a key aspect of cinematographic technology and its artistic potential.

KEYWORDS:

• Simon Stampfer
• optical illusions
• proto-cinematography
• Stroboscopic Discs
• animation

Notes

¹ Mathias Trentsensky and Friedrich Vieweg, “Vorwort,” in Stroboscopischen Scheiben, iii–iv.

² Ibid., iv. This publisher’s forward is the only other item in this booklet.

³ Passim.

⁴ Although there is a practical ring to these remarks, it is uncertain whether Stampfer actually fabricated such a strip-based set-up, let alone how successful it might have been. It is perhaps telling in this regard that only the disc format was commercially exploited.

⁵ See: Laurent Mannoni, “Les disques stroboscopiques et magiques de Simon Stampfer” in Maurice Dorikens (ed.), Joseph Plateau 1801–1883: Living Between Art and Science (Flanders: Provincis Oost, 2001), 235-41.

⁶ Stampfer writes in section 16:

“If the ratios between G [The speed of the picture disc] and g [The speed of the aperture disc] differ [...] to such an extent that another combination of individual impressions becomes predominant, then a different phenomenon will also occur. The general principle here is that the clearest pictures will always emerge more readily from those impressions that are most frequently repeated and at the least variance with respect to the direction of the rays of light. Hence a certain combination of impressions may also become predominant when G/g = 2/3, 1/3, 2/5, 3/5 etc.; at the intermediate slits the rays of light pertinent to the phenomenon will fall on blank spaces and the number of images will appear to have multiplied even more, and so on. The simpler the ratio between G and g, the more distinct the formation of the phenomena will be; the analogy between these ratios and musical notes can hardly be ignored.”

⁷ Regarding “visual music” see, for example, the writings of William Moritz, such as “Abstract Film and Color Music,” in The Spiritual In Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985 (New York: Abbeville, 1986), 296–311; Aimee Mollaghan, The Visual Music Film (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); and Christian Kiening and Heinrich Adolf (eds.), Der absolute Film: Dokumente der Medienavantgarde (1912–1936) (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2012). See also the numerous materials gathered online by the Center for Visual Music 〈http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/, accessed 18 January 2015.

⁸ Translator’s note: See “Gesicht” [vision], in H. W. Brandes, L. Gmelin, J. C. Horner et al. (eds.), Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler’s Physikalisches Wörterbuch, 2nd edn (Leipzig: E.B. Schwickert, 1828), vol. 4, part 2, G., 1364–485, esp. 1460–1, plate XVIII, Figs. 224–5.

⁹ Translator’s note: See Peter Mark Roget, “Explanation of an Optical Deception in the Appearance of the Spokes of a Wheel Seen Through Vertical Apertures,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 115 (1825): 131–40; Michael Faraday, “On a Peculiar Class of Optical Deceptions,” Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 1 (1831): 205–23; and Andreas Baumgartner, “Über optische Täuschungen besonderer Art. Von M. Faraday,” Zeitschrift für Physik und Mathematik 10 (1832): 80–101.

¹⁰ Editor’s note: What have been translated here as the “slits” and “apertures” of the Stroboscopic Discs, Stampfer calls, initially, “Einschnitten” (in section 2, omitted here), then switches between “Löchern” and “Öffnungen.”

¹¹ Editor’s note: This bracketed sentence is a summary of a lengthy, complicated, formulae-laden passage that has been omitted here.

¹² Editor’s note: Naturally, the inverse obtains. That is, we can paraphrase Stampfer as follows: if the number of pictures is greater than that of the slits, they will appear to revolve in the same direction but faster than the movement of the disc at a rate of one revolution per n + 1 rotations of the disc (with n being the number of slits).

¹³ Editor’s note: In section 16, omitted here, Stampfer notes, with regard to these “limits” that “the number of pictures ought not be too far removed from n (the number of slits).”