zoopraxiscope

[zoh-uh-prak-suh-skohp]

noun

Movies.

1. an early type of motion-picture projector, designed by Eadweard Muybridge, in which the images were drawings or photographs placed along the rim of a circular glass plate, the shutter was a rotating opaque disk with radial slots, and a limelight source was used.

Word History and Origins

Origin of zoopraxiscope¹

zoo- + praxi- as combining form of Greek práxis action, praxis + -scope; term introduced by Muybridge about 1881, replacing his own earlier term zoogyriscope

Example Sentences

The next year, he would begin holding presentations that put his sequential photographs — or, technically, artistic reproductions of them — in motion, using a device he called the zoopraxiscope, a forerunner of the film projector.

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Muybridge pioneered motion pictures with help from a contraption called the zoopraxiscope which projected sequences of images held on spinning glass discs.

Read more on The Guardian

Muybridge went on to apply his technique to various kinds of human and animal activity, but his next conceptual advance was to develop a device to reanimate his pictures in short loops, called the Zoöpraxiscope, now considered an important forerunner of cinema.

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Muybridge’s photography is of course a way to visually preserve a thing for a later time, and his zoopraxiscope and other experiments with moving pictures were focused on breaking movements through time into static ​​​images​ that could be interpreted.

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An 1893 Eadweard Muybridge zoopraxiscope, “A Couple Waltzing,” works like film to give you the impression of a slightly less refined pair stepping as they rotate.

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