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Abstract
This is a short open letter to the French-speaking scientific community dated January 1833. It is significant for offering the first published, unequivocal description of the “illusion of movement” achieved using animated dra known as the Phenakistiscope. Joseph Plateau’s letter can be paired with the next article in this issue, an almost contemporaneous essay by Simon Stampfer that outlines near identical discoveries in greater detail. Together, these texts provide the foundation for a key aspect of cinematographic technology and its artistic potential.
Notes
1. For details concerning Plateau and the Phenakistiscope, see: Laurent Mannoni, The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), 215–22; David Robinson, Masterpieces of Animation 1833–1908, Griffithiana 43 (1991); and Maurice Dorikens (ed.), Joseph Plateau 1801–1883: Living Between Art and Science (Flanders: Provincis Oost, 2001).
1. Editor’s note: Michael Faraday, “On a Peculiar Class of Optical Deceptions,” Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 1 (1831): 205–23.
2. It has only been possible to render the figures as line drawings; one can imagine that in order to create the best possible illusion, they would need to be shaded and coloured.