The Zoopraxiscope
The original zoopraxiscope for 16 inch discs had a set of removable shutters with different numbers of slots, for producing various motion effects. The glass discs are edged in a leather texture paper and have a central circular paper label of the same material and a central hole to enable them to be attached to the machine. The discs contain various numbers of images. Most are painted in black silhouette, some are painted with details. Only one disc bears photographic images: the disc of a "galloping" horse skeleton. The images are photographs of a horse skeleton posed in a sequence representing the phases of motion. The disc has been produced by a unique method - the images are on small roughly triangular pieces of glass, each glued onto the main glass disc.
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The original packing crate which contained part of the zoopraxiscope, had on the underside of the lid a chart, drawn by Muybridge, of the sizes of projected images he could achieve with different lenses at different distances from a screen. For a larger version of this photo please see Zoopraxiscope Photo. (will open as PDF) |
©All Images copyright Kingston Museum and Heritage Service
The work at Palo Alto brought Muybridge fame and admiration from artists and scientists alike, and took him on his famous lecture tours of the1880s. Some were critical of the 'awkward' attitudes of his galloping horse pictures, and to prove their authenticity Muybridge turned from motion analysis to motion synthesis. He produced a machine first named the Zoogyroscope - later the Zoopraxiscope - which was a projecting version of the old Phenakistiscope or 'spinning picture disc' invented in the 1830s. With apparently only one exception (a posed photographic sequence of a horse skeleton) the Zoopraxiscope projected drawings, mostly silhouettes, based on his sequence photographs.
The private gathering that watched the first Zoopraxiscope projections at Mayfield Grange, the home of Muybridge's sponsor Leland Stanford at Palo Alto farm, in the autumn of 1879 has the distinction of being one of the earliest motion picture audiences (where photography was the original method of capturing, in real time, the movement shown in the drawings). Projection using the Zoopraxiscope machine was not entirely straightforward. To compensate for the vertical (anorthoscopic) compression produced by the limitations of the slotted shutter device, the images on the disc needed to be elongated, rather than simply being the sequence images as photographed.
The original Zoogyroscope/Zoopraxiscope machine was designed to take 16-inch glass discs. The machine no longer survives, and there is no known illustration of it. What are thought to be some parts of this machine (a section of the lantern, and a disc guard) are in the collection at Kingston. At some point, Muybridge built a new mechanism with fixed shutter, and designed for a new series of 12-inch discs. This was used (apparently together with the earlier machine) at the Chicago Exposition of 1893, and later.
This surviving Zoopraxiscope is the 'jewel in the crown' of the Kingston Muybridge Collection. Designed for 12-inch discs, it is in three parts:
(1) A lens on mount.
(2) Central gearing mechanism.
(3) Lantern body (a modified American science lantern).
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©All Images copyright Kingston Museum and Heritage Service
The revolving disc shutter, with twelve slots, is a permanent part of the machine, (the earlier version had made use of interchangeable shutters, with varying numbers of slots depending on the nature of the disc being projected). The shutter is constructed from two slotted discs face-to-face that can be adjusted to slide over one another, so that the width of the slots can be adjusted. This enables a good compromise to be made between screen brightness (slots wide open) and image sharpness (slots narrowed), depending on the size/brightness of the required projected image. Holes and wear-marks in the wooden mechanism casing indicate that modifications to the machine have been made at some time.
The lantern body is a modified science lantern of a type popular in the USA. (The rods on either side relate to its former use as a projector for demonstrating scientific experiments, and are superfluous for its use with the Zoopraxiscope). The limelight-burner illuminant, shown on at least one early photograph of the machine, is now missing. The lens would appear to be a studio portrait camera lens, but could be used for projection. (Correspondence in the museum files suggests that this lens is a replacement for the original, which was lost some time before the 1930s). Several replicas of the zoopraxiscope have been made, including one used from 1988-1999 at the now defunct Museum of the Moving Image, London; one at the Science Museum, London; and one at Kingston Museum.