Animation Praxinoscope

Rebuild one of the world's first animation toys invented 170 years ago and learn optical principles which laid the theoretical backbone of modern animation and movies. Create your very own mini movies and invite your friends to attend a unique animation show.

Feature! special light bulb allowing you to view the animation at night. You will be amazed by the simulated impression of early movies. Contains full set Praxinoscope with light bulb installed (assembly required), 6 ready-to-view animation movie discs and 6 blank discs for creating your very own movies, and a set of detailed instructions with fun facts.

This scientific toy with animated images relies in retinal persistence to make us believe we are seeing images in motion.

The praxinoscope was patented by the Frenchman Emile Reynaud in 1877, who was looking to overcome the deficiencies of the zoetrope, which enjoyed enormous popularity at the time. His apparatus was the first to eliminate the distorted view of the images in movement caused by insufficient light passing through the small slots of the zoetrope. This improvement in the quality of the image resulted in immediate popularity for the praxinoscope.

When completed, the praxinoscope is about 13 cm high with a 12.5 cm disc.

The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.