Welcome	About	Introduction	Chapter One beginning of time – 999 AD
Chapter Two 1000 AD – 1399	Chapter Three 1400 – 1599	Chapter Four 1600 – 1649	Chapter Five 1650 – 1699
Chapter Six 1700 – 1749	Chapter Seven 1750 – 1799	Chapter Eight 1800 – 1819	Chapter Nine 1820 – 1829
Chapter Ten 1830 – 1839	Chapter Eleven 1840 – 1849	Chapter Twelve 1850 – 1859	Chapter Thirteen 1860 – 1869
Chapter Fourteen 1870 – 1879	Chapter Fifteen 1880 – 1884	Chapter Sixteen 1885 – 1889	Chapter Seventeen 1890 – 1894
Chapter Eighteen 1895 – 1896	Chapter Nineteen 1897 – 1899	Chapter Twenty 1900 + post cinema	Chapter Twenty-One Addendum 1911+
Copyright	HOTDOC Internet Archive Channel	HOTDOC X Channel	HOTDOC You Tube Channel

_{Period: 1860-1869}

François Willème closed out the 1850s by laying the groundwork for 3D sculpturing to appear within twenty years of the birth of personal photography.

Lanternists like John Henry Pepper and Lionel Smith Beale take their Magic Lantern programs to new levels during the 19^th century, maintaining a constant following as they went. If you think you haven’t seen animated pictures by now, then we are just an arms length from it in the latter half of this century.

The 1860s promises to be the proverbial roller-coaster ride. Buckle up.

Because it used the wet plate collodion process, the plate had to be sensitized, exposed, and developed while the chemicals were still damp. In a typical 1860s sidewalk studio or fairground booth, the process followed a rapid-fire sequence:

📸 Preparation (1 minute)
📸 Exposure (10–30 seconds)
📸 Development (1 minute)
📸 Fixing and Rinsing (2 minutes)
📸 Drying and Varnishing (1 minute)

Unlike earlier Daguerreotypes, which required long exposures and dangerous mercury vapor fumes to develop, or Paper Prints, which required a separate negative and hours of sunlight to ‘print out,’  the Tintype was a direct positive.

The camera produced the final image directly onto the metal. There was no waiting for a negative to dry or for a lab to process the film. They were the cheap, democratic version of photography.

1860
THE APPLETON MOTOSCOPE
The Daniel Appleton (1785–1849) company in 1860 was controlled by son William Henry Appleton (1814-1899) now, a significant importer of Stereoscopes and Stereoviews who contributed to the introduction of this new craze in the US in the early 1850s.

---

Appleton and Company introduced The Motoscope, a simple Stereo viewer much like the Mascher Viewer, that blocks one eye at a time so that the Stereographs in different positions, would appear to move, exhibiting the figures in motion.

_{Images Digital Commonwealth and Vintage Viewers}

---

This cardboard 3D viewer from the 1860s is among the best examples of a folding Stereoscope viewer. Two of the Motoscope series from Appleton were called Stereoscope for the Million featuring views of Niagara, Farm Scenes, and Churches of Europe. Another was Voyage to Europe.

_{Images Vintage Viewers}

---

The Stereoviews in the Voyage to Europe album are on glossy, toned paper unlike the Stereoscope for the Million. Images are from the David A. Hanson Collection of the History of Photomechanical Reproduction, Digital Commonwealth, and from Vintage Viewers.

_{Images Vintage Viewers}

1860s
THE PROJECTING KALEIDOSCOPE LENS FOR THE MAGIC LANTERN
CHARLES JOHN DARKER (1841-1900)
Brian Coe states that this London optician named Charles Darker succeeded in attaching a Kaleidoscope lens to a Magic Lantern in the 1860s. Writes Coe: “His projection Kaleidoscope produced a remarkable effect when used to fill a large screen with a colorful, constantly changing pattern.”  [The History of Movie Photography, Brian Coe, Eastview Editions, Westfield NJ, 1981].

_{Image Chiswick}

The son of respected optical precisionist William Hill Darker, Charles Darker created a new projection device that can now be seen by many people instead of just one.

---

This Darker lens merged the Kaleidoscope’s ability to generate elaborate, symmetrical patterns with the Magic Lantern’s projection capabilities, allowing bright, dynamic Kaleidoscopic images to be projected onto a screen for an audience.

The lens normally consisted of a brass barrel with two mirrors arranged in a V shape between lens components, as well as a spinning slide containing coloured glass fragments to form shifting patterns.

---

A projection Kaleidoscope that was made by William Darker’s sons, Charles and Francis (C & F Darker). It consists of two long mirrors, set at a 60 degree angle to each other. Light shining down the tube produces a 6-fold reflection of the projected image.

Also pictured is a stated circa 1870 photograph (I believe this is a drawing) of the intersection of High and Paradise Streets, Lambeth. The Darker’s lived and worked at 9 Paradise Street.

_{Images Brian Stevenson and Howard Lynk}

---

Some variants of the Darker lens, authenticated to C & F Darker (Charles and his brother Francis), were patented and packaged in beautiful mahogany boxes. This Kaleidoscope projection innovation increased the Magic Lantern’s entertainment value, reflecting the Victorian era’s infatuation with optical toys and visual spectacles.

_{Images Science Museum Group}

These stereoviews consist of two slightly different images printed on thin albumen paper, a common 19^th century photographic medium made with egg whites. The images are mounted on a cardboard frame with cutouts to reveal the images, and a layer of tissue paper is added to the back.

---

The Tissue Stereoview was made in Paris from c. 1860 on. Propriete Paris BK was the biggest producer, operated by Adolphe Block (1829-1915). The 3.5 x 1/2 x 7-inch cards had a die-cut open back and a stereo photograph of ornate tableaus.

Adolphe Braun, Pierre-Henri Amand, and Léon & Lévy, were among other key figures and companies involved in their production. Propriété Paris BK, associated with Adolphe Block (often referred to as B.K.), was a notable producer of tissue stereoviews in Paris during the 1860s and 1870s.

Adolphe Block, born in 1829, published stereoviews from 1863 to 1915, including a significant number of Tissue Stereoviews, particularly those in the Diableries series.

These stereoviews were known for their imaginative depictions of fantastical scenes, such as devils, skeletons, and satyrs, which transformed into vibrant, colourful ‘night’ scenes when backlit, often with effects like glowing red eyes created by piercing the albumen paper and applying red gel.

---

Propriete Paris BK released sets of six or twelve tissue stereoview cards in a succession named Le Theatres de Paris. Stories like Faust, Cinderella, and William Tell became favourites of these theatrical stereoview tissues.

Block’s work, marked by “B.K. Propriété Paris” on the card mounts, included theatrical scenes from productions like Cendrillon, La Juive, and L’Africaine, as well as other subjects like Parisian landmarks and interiors.

His studio collaborated with sculptors like Pierre Adolphe Hennetier, Louis Alfred Habert, and Louis Edmond Cougny to create detailed plaster and clay figurines for these stereoviews, enhancing their artistic and three-dimensional appeal.

---

In addition to popular topics, special effects came into play such as the dissolve that foretold Truffaut’s day-for-night technique. With front-light the BW scene was magically transformed to colour when held up to backlight. Cinema FX in 1860.

---

The stereo photo was printed on thin tissue paper, gently hand-coloured and frequently pierced with a pin.

Notice in the example that these ladies had strategic pin holes placed about their necks to offer a dazzling string of light like pearl necklaces.

---

---

Colour photography did not exist at the time these were created; colour could only be acquired by hand. The production of these French Tissue Stereoviews began in other nations, particularly England, not long after the French introduced them.

---

Tissue Stereoviews were called “illuminated” or “panoptical” views in France. B. K. Paris, Adolphe Block’s studio, printed photographs, including stereoviews, from 1863 to 1915. 

Pictured is “1870s Caring For Sick Family” French Tissue Paper photo stereoview showing the front and back.

The listing further describes the Polydoscope as a mechanised / perfected version of the Kaleidoscope, essentially a Kaleidoscope with a moving plate (“plateau animé”) and a mechanism to multiply or double the effect.

I could not find independent documentation (outside that auction catalogue summary) giving full technical drawings or extensive description of Sies’s Polydoscope. The only image of the Polydoscope I found is from Varenne Enchères / J. Truchetet / J. F. De Lastours in Paris. It has no description or function of what we are looking at.

There are very few if any surviving scholarly references dedicated exclusively to Sies and the Polydoscope in major cinema history sources at least in my search. Many sources of early pre cinema devices mention various optical toys but Sies is only marginally cited if at all.

For example, a broad study of pre cinema inventions mentions Sies among other experimenters, but without detail. There is no patent number shown in the auction listing, so verifying the exact wording, drawings or legal status is difficult from what I found.

The term Polydoscope is rare in standard pre cinema literature; there is risk of conflation and the extent to which Sies’s device contributed to motion picture development is unclear. The Polydoscope appears to be part of the broader 19th century trend of optical entertainments and scientific toys.

Sies’s device, by adding mechanised motion (“mécanisation”) and multiple effects (“double effet et multiplicateur”) suggests an early attempt to enhance the visual wonder of Kaleidoscopes. The device exemplifies how optical spectacle and mechanism were being combined before true cinema emerged.

It shows that inventors were exploring ways of automating or multiplying visual effects, not just static viewing.

The Aluminatrum (a specific model or branded name for an opaque projection apparatus) was a specialized optical projection device, a variant of the Aphengescope or megascope, developed in the 1860s primarily for projecting images of opaque photographs, such as cartes-de-visite, onto a screen.

It was introduced by the opticians Horne, Thornthwaite, and Wood in England, with a focus on improving the projection of photographic images.

The Aluminatrum used a strong light source, typically enhanced by mirrors or multiple lanterns, to illuminate the opaque object, and a projection lens to cast an enlarged image.

It’s design often incorporated an alum tank to absorb heat, protecting delicate photographs from damage during projection.

---

The name Aluminatrum derives from alumen (Latin for alum), referring to the alum-based heat filter. This device was part of the broader development of Magic Lanterns and opaque projectors, which were popular for educational and entertainment purposes in the 19th century, allowing audiences to view magnified images of photographs or small objects with high fidelity in lines and colours.

A description of the Aphengescope (sometimes spelled with an O) taken from The Art of Projection and Complete Magic Lantern Manual by Expert (Charles D. Bishop 1865-1942), published by E. A. Beckett, in London, 1893, found on page 130.

---

The Aphengescope has also been mistakenly called a Mégascope which was also manufactured by Molteni.

Molteni did however construct an Aphengescope Megascope Chamber which added to the confusion between the two.

---

The Aphengoscope was developed especially for projecting photographs and in particular, carte-de-visites.

This sheet metal Aphengoscope was also called “Cone for the projection of opaque bodies” and was equipped with a 45° mirror. Notice the O.

---

Light from the lantern passes through the capacitor and is reflected before being projected onto the screen by a cogwheel lens.

The Aphengescope was capable of projecting onto a large screen and could be seen by many people.

---

---

From H. Fourtiers book La Pratique Des Projections in 1892 on p47 (figures 24 and 25) we see an illustration of Molteni’s Aphengescope Megascope Chamber called only the Aphengescope.

---

In Molteni’s 4th edition of Instructions Pratiques sur l’Emploi des Appareils de Projection from 1884 we see illustrations of the same device Molteni called his Megascope which is the Aphengescope Megascope Chamber.

It’s found in Chapter XVI, figure 81 on page 204, and figure 80 on page 203.

---

The first Magic Lantern of this nature seems to have been conceived by Leonard Euler who defined the opaque lantern in a dispatch to a German princess dated 8 January, 1762, were he declares he gave her one, six years before.

1860s
THE COSMOSCOPE
FRANCIS FRITH (1822-1898)
In the early 1860s, English photographer Francis Frith invented the Cosmoscope. It was a table viewer of photographs, printed on thin albumen paper, coloured from behind like paper Stereographs. Frith was an entrepreneur, renowned for his pioneering work in travel photography, particularly of the Middle East, Egypt, and Britain.

Born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Frith initially pursued a career in business, running a successful grocery and printing firm before turning to photography in the 1850s.

---

He gained fame for his photographic expeditions to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria between 1856 and 1859, capturing ancient monuments, landscapes, and cultural scenes with remarkable technical skill.

His images, taken using the wet collodion process, were among the earliest to document these regions systematically, appealing to Victorian-era fascination with the Holy Land and ancient civilizations.

Cosmoscope photographs were mounted in cardboard frames and inserted in a groove at the back of the viewer. By observing the photograph with reflected or transmitted light, an outstanding effect was produced.

---

The Frith Cosmoscope (left) is reminiscent of the Carlo Ponti Megalethoscope (right), a much larger and similar viewer, which won a medal at the International Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1862. It was built on a very impressive scale, as its name indicates. Frith’s work was sold as individual prints, albums, and stereoscopic cards, making exotic locales accessible to a wide audience.

In 1859, he founded Francis Frith and Company, a photography business that became one of the largest publishers of photographs in Britain. The company focused on documenting British towns, villages, and landscapes, creating a vast archive of topographical images.

Frith aimed to capture the essence of Britain’s heritage, and his firm continued producing postcards and prints well into the 20th century, long after his death.

---

From The History of Movie Photography by Brian Coe, New York Zoetrope Inc., Westfield New Jersey, 1981 on p27 we can read more about the Frith Cosmoscope.

---

In 1856 Frith made an extended trip to Egypt, travelling up the Nile from Cairo where he took pioneering photographs for his Cosmoscope.

He used 3 different cameras:
📷 a Stereoscopic one
📷 and 2 large-format cameras using negatives of 8 by 10 and 16 by 20 inches

---

On his return he opened the Frith and Company studio in Liverpool and published his photographs between 1858 and 1860. Pictured is a Francis Frith self-portrait in a traditional Turkish Summer costume. An Albumen silver print from a glass negative. David Hunter McAlpin Collection.

Frith’s Cosmoscope, c. 1870, domed burr walnut veneered case, hinged lid with viewing lens together with 56 photographs, from the lands of the Bible, height 5.5 inches, length 17 inches.

---

The Frith Cosmoscope seen on the left should not be confused with the Richard Choubersky Cosmoscope of 1905 pictured in the centre and on the right [top right and bottom if you’re on your phone].

Frith’s legacy endures through the extensive Frith Collection, a valuable historical record of 19^th century Britain and beyond, still accessible today through archives and publications.

Peter Hubert Desvignes was a British architect and inventor whose 1860 patent represents a significant evolutionary step in pre cinema history.

While often overshadowed by William George Horner (creator of the Daedaleum), Desvignes’ work was technically more sophisticated, particularly in its integration of stereoscopy with motion.

Desvignes’ patent described a series of improvements for “exhibiting photographic, stereoscopic, and other pictures.” The device shown is a variation of what he called the Mimoscope, which I have a separate series on.

Like the Zoetrope, Desvignes used a revolving drum with slits. However, he was one of the first to explicitly design these for use with photographic sequences rather than just hand-drawn illustrations. His primary contribution was the use of dual-image strips.

By placing two slightly different sequences of images inside the drum and viewing them through a stereoscopic eyepiece, he achieved the illusion of 3D motion.

---

A simple pre cinema optical motion picture toy. Desvignes is a fascinating figure because he bridged the gap between the static StereoViewer and the moving image.

Despite the technical superiority of his 1860 design, Desvignes did not successfully commercialize the device on a mass scale. By the time the Zoetrope became a global phenomenon in the late 1860s, it was largely due to the simplified, cheaper manufacturing of the 2D version popularized by Milton Bradley in America and the London Stereoscopic Company in the UK.

Desvigne’s work remains a critical primary source for researchers because it proves that the desire for high-fidelity, 3D moving images existed decades before the major players entered the field. Images Rossell, 2022 page 20.

1860
THE MIMOSCOPE
PETER HUBERT DESVIGNES (1804-1883)
Desvignes conceived of and then developed several types of a device he called his Mimoscope motion-sequence viewer. No images of the device can be found.

---

a device of cunning construction—
a wonder among wonders at the Great Exhibition

---

---

One account in the London International Exhibition Catalogue of 1862 where the Mimoscope was presented, states that “insects appeared moving,” and also chronicles that it was “furnished with pictures of exquisite artistic finish and beauty.”

---

---

From the International Exhibition of 1862 Catalogue, we read of more accolades bestowed on this Victorian-age optical toy that fits right into pre cinema history.

This quote “an instructive philosophical toy, affording endless variety and amusement” is found on page 10.

---

---

---

This reference by Herschel in 1860 that they at that time, had already seen motion in animated form is an extraordinary thought-of-significance if you think of it. Like the prancing horse and rider we see above, or the backward-somersaulting demon in the centre.

A fascinating subject which I will expand on more, as the chapters roll on.

It was a compact, brass-bodied camera, often shaped as a small cube (approximately 4 inches or 37 x 37mm for sub-miniature versions).

Some models were cylindrical or larger (e.g., 6 x 6cm). It is widely regarded as the first sub-miniature camera, using small wet collodion plates (as small as 1.5 inches or 2.5 x 2.5 inches), which made it highly portable compared to the cumbersome photographic equipment of the era.

The camera’s lens had a fixed focus, meaning objects beyond a certain distance were automatically in sharp focus, simplifying operation. It used the wet collodion process, requiring plates to be prepared and developed on-site.

The camera often came with a kit, including a mahogany box with reagent bottles and chemicals, and an outer case that could serve as a portable darkroom with a light-safe sleeve and red glass top.

---

Examples are extremely rare, often found only in museum collections like the George Eastman Museum or Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers. In 2017, a Chambre Automatique sold at auction for $27,156, far exceeding its $81 original purchase, highlighting its collectible value.

Bertsch’s work in microphotography, including improving the collodion process and presenting findings to the French Academy of Science in 1853, influenced the camera’s design for precision imaging. The camera was sometimes called the Chambre Microscopique due to its small size and Bertsch’s microphotography background.

Its shutter mechanism was simple, often just a brass lens cap, typical of the era. The Chambre Automatique represents a pivotal moment in photographic history, blending portability, innovation, and versatility, and remains a coveted artifact for collectors and historians.

The camera case also housed the equipment and chemicals to prepare and develop plates in the field, while an outer case served as a darkroom. Bertsch also made a Stereoscopic model pictured here.

---

---

---

To give greater correctness to the impressions, two views are generally taken at the same moment, by two distinct cameras, having lenses of uniform focus and distance from each other, fastened together by a movable slide fixed on the top of a tripod.

---

---

---

From the same book, Vestal gives us two more images from the introduction;

Figure 1. The Derby Hat as a Camera Obscura (left or top left if on a phone)

Figure 2. Beaver Hat Converted into a Photographic Camera (centre or top right if on a phone)

Figure 3. Mode of Using the Apparatus (right or bottom if on a phone)

---

1860
THE FOLIOSCOPE
PIERRE HUBERT DESVIGNES (1808-1883)
Desvignes designs an optical toy he called a Folioscope producing Stereoscopic Photographs in motion. He also instigated the use of posed models for recapturing motion.

Desvignes, a French inventor and engineer, was granted British patent № 537 on 27 February 1860 identified as “Improvements in apparatuses for exhibiting photographic, stereoscopic, and other pictures, models, figures, and designs.” The entry explicitly states Desvignes claimed 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices, including versions with an endless band between spools, intermittently lit.

---

---

Gersheim tells us of “Moving photographic figures” found in The History of Photography . . . . to the Beginning of The Modern Era, 1969 on p256 along with “stereoscopic pictures” and the “revolving cylinder,” but does not mention the name Mimoscope as did Herbert.

---

---

---

1860
HONOURABLE MENTION
THOMAS HOOMAN DU MONT ( )
Although he never builds it, this gentleman named Du Mont (not to be confused with Henri Désiré Du Mont [two entries coming up below] ) designed on paper, a camera, which he believed, was capable of photographing motion. Nothing else is know of this, no images or other info.

---

Stereoview cards photographed by Victorian Britain’s Stereoscopic luminary William England, showing images of the UK, Switzerland and other European scenery. Glass stereoviews are 4 1/2 inches by 7 5/8 inches.

---

The interior of this type of viewer holds a number of stereo cards mounted on a belt as these overhead photographs show. When the knob on the side is turned, the cards come into view one at a time.

---

In 1842 as a twelve-year old, England began working as an apprenticed photographic assistant in a Daguerreotype studio, learning the technique of portraiture and the chemical procedure of treating the light-sensitive silver-coated metal plates to generate a saleable image.

---

Stereoscopic photography had advanced well enough and the London Stereoscopic Company was founded in 1854. England joined the company the same year. William quickly established himself as the London Stereoscopic Company’s most outstanding photographer.

---

---

---

1860
THE HOLMES-BATES PERFECSCOPE
HIS GIFT TO THE PUBLIC
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR
Holmes Sr. invented his Stereoscope and without patenting its design, it was quickly copied. Many Stereoscopes popped up based on the style.

Seeking a more lightweight and affordable alternative to the bulky box-style stereoscopes of Brewster Holmes designed the handheld Holmes Stereoscope featuring a simple wooden T-frame with a sliding card holder and a hooded pair of lenses.

Holmes deliberately did not patent his design. He wanted the device to be a gift to the public, for the “improvement of the public mind,” which allowed numerous manufacturers to produce and iterate on his model without paying royalties.

---

THE HOLMES-BATES STEREOSCOPE
Joseph Lincoln Bates (1806–1886) was the critical figure who transformed Holmes’s intellectual concept into a functional, mass-marketed product. In fact, the device is more accurately referred to in historical circles as the Holmes-Bates Stereoscope.

Pictured is a Holmes-Bates Stereoscope sitting on a Busch patented stand.

While Holmes provided the optical theory and the initial skeleton of the design, he was not a mechanic or a manufacturer. He brought his ideas to Bates, a Boston-based “fancy goods” merchant and manufacturer, to bridge the gap between a prototype and a sell-able item.

After this, the Stereoscope became known as the Holmes-Bates stereoscope or, the American Stereoscope.

---

Bates’s involvement was essential for several key refinements made between 1860 and 1861. While Holmes conceived of the adjustable distance, Bates helped finalize the mechanical implementation of the sliding crossbar that held the Stereocard.

Bates also added the wooden handle (often a turn-down or folding style) that allowed the viewer to be held easily with one hand.

Pictured is a Stereoscopic viewer with colourised Stereoscopic view, designed by Oliver Wendell Holmes and Joseph Bates. Image courtesy the Bard Graduate Centre Library. Photograph Bruce White.

Because Holmes famously refused to patent the design, Bates was the first to manufacture and market it commercially. His shop at No. 6 Court Street, Boston, became the primary source for the early models.

---

FAST FORWARD TO 1895
THE PERFECSCOPE
The Perfecscope was a specific, high-quality commercial iteration of the Holmes-style stereoscope. It was produced by Underwood & Underwood, [Bert Elias Underwood (1862–1943) and Elmer Underwood (1859–1947)] major distributors of Stereographic views and patented in 1895 (US Patent № 548148) by William Edward Foster 22 October.

The Perfecscope is easily identifiable by its aluminum hood with filigree patterns and its folding handle, a refinement that occurred long after Holmes’s original 19^th century prototype.

This patent covered the specific “improvement in stereoscopes” that defined the Perfecscope—notably the folding handle and the shaped aluminum hood that blocked out peripheral light more effectively than previous wooden models.

Foster worked closely with Underwood & Underwood while the brothers were the marketing geniuses who sold the world on Stereographic travel sets, it was Foster’s mechanical refinements that gave their brand its signature look─the silver viewing hood.

---

The Perfecscope viewing hood contains two lenses and is housed entirely in wood. The support arm is held by a crosspiece that can slide towards the hood to adjust the focus at the viewer’s end on two metallic rods.

By 1901, production of stereoscopic photographs at Underwood and Underwood reached 25,000 a day while annual sales of stereoscopes attained a level of 300,000.

The firm of J. H. Dallmeyer was founded in 1860. He emigrated to England in 1851 and joined the lens-manufacturing firm of Andrew Ross.

---

He married Ross’s second daughter, Hannah, in 1854, and upon Ross’s death in 1859, inherited a third of his fortune and the telescope-manufacturing arm of the business.

---

Dallmeyer established his own company in London, focusing on improving photographic lenses. He then worked on the improvement of photographic lenses, introducing in succession, various high-aperture portrait lenses.

In 1863 he produced his Triple Achromatic lens seen here and in 1866 his most important, the Rapid Rectilinear. Image Larry S. Pierce.

---

This beautiful 1863 Dallmeyer Triple Achromatic Lens still has its original leather lens cap and the serial number can be traced back to its sale on the exact date of 20 September 1863. He also developed photoheliographs for solar photography and enhanced microscope and optical lantern condensers.

^{Images Larry S. Pierce}

---

His instruments earned widespread acclaim, securing awards at international exhibitions in Dublin, Berlin, Paris, and Philadelphia. He received the French Legion of Honour and the Russian Order of St. Stanislaus and was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1861.

---

---

---

---

Patented in 1866, this lens shown is a Dallmeyer Patent Portrait and Group Lens (Petzval-type) (two groups; two cemented elements in a front group, and two elements with an air spacing in the rear group). Images Larry S. Pierce.

---

This lens was suitable for portraits and groups of people, but not as sharp as other types for landscapes unless stopped down. Its advantage for portraiture was its speed and, since it had to be stopped down for landscapes, the advantage of speed was thereby negated.

Pictured here is a Dallmeyer Patent Portrait and Group Lens Petzval-type lens from four angles. Patented in 1866.

---

As a result of the discovery of photography, the second half of the 19th century was marked by the rapid development of photographic optics.

It became necessary to calculate photographic lenses with high resolution.

---

Mass production of optical devices required deep knowledge in the field of physical, physiological optics and photometry. Moving more towards photographic lenses than optical lenses for astronomical work, Dallmeyer introduced many improvements to his lenses.

---

Below, the Dallmeyer Universal Sliding Box Camera c.1868 on the left, and the Dallmeyer Box Camera, 1865.

Even though brass Dallmeyer lenses are no longer made, they are highly prized. Collectors have even attached them to their SLR and DSLR cameras.

Health issues forced Dallmeyer to step back from work around 1880. He travelled extensively in search of recovery but died on 30 December 1883, aboard a ship off New Zealand’s coast.

1860s
THE STANHOPE LENS OF LORD CHARLES STANHOPE (1753-1816)
THE CODDING MAGNIFIER OF SIR DAVID BREWSTER (1781-1868)
THE OPTICAL BIJOU OF RENE DAGRON (1819-1900)
The Stanhope as it was and still is referred to, was/is an optical device that enables the viewing of John Benjamin Dancer’s microphotographs (or any tiny object) that is inside a small novelty souvenir such as a pen, a letter opener or a ring. Remember the Peep Eggs?

Well, the Stanhope was even smaller. Stanhopes became very popular during the 19th century and we see them being made right up to the 1970s.

---

THE STANHOPE
These tiny objects, which could include jewelry, pens, and sewing supplies, are distinctive due to the small hidden image that is concealed inside of the novelty item. Holding the novelty up to the light and gazing into a tiny hole where the magnified picture appears will reveal the image.

These photographs, which are roughly 1/4 inch long and 1/10th of an inch in diametre, feature both landscape and portrait subjects.

Lord Charles Stanhope, 3^rd Earl of Stanhope, the creator of the Stanhope Lens, is credited with coining the term “Stanhope.”

---

THE CODDING MAGNIFIER
The name Stanhope is somewhat of a misleading term when looking at the history, because the actual lens used in most of these novelty item Stanhopes were not really Stanhope lenses-they in fact are Codding Magnifier lenses, invented by Sir David Brewster (1781-1868). 

If Stanhopes, Codding Magnifiers and Optical Bijou’s appear to look and do the same thing, that’s because they were basically the same.

---

THE OPTICAL BIJOU
John Benjamin Dancer (1812–1887) of whom I have spoken on, created microphotographs in 1839 by affixing a microscope lens to a Daguerreotype camera. This new photographic information inspired Rene Dagron (1819-1900) a Parisian portraitist, to manufacture the Stanhope as a result of this new technology. He called it the Optical Bijou.

That name didn’t catch on well outside of France. Dagron started producing his Optical Bijou in the early 1860s. And as I said at the outset, Stanhopes were being made right up until the 1970s.

Such longevity for a tiny pre cinema trinket.

1859-1860s
ETIENNE-JULES MAREY (1830-1904)
Marey was born in Beaune, France, in 1830. In addition to becoming the first filmmaker in the history of French cinema, he was a physician, physiologist, biologist, biomechanist, and professor at the Collège de France.

During the 1860s Marey threw himself into the study of flight, first of insects and then birds. His aim was to understand how a wing interacted with the air to cause the animal to move.

---

Marey created a variety of instruments to investigate avian flight, including systems that could capture the smallest movement of birds

---

Marey dedicated his life to one goal: to record every movement, whether it was human or animal. To accomplish this, he initially devised his graphic method, which entailed transcribing movement as markings on paper or on the body of the running man himself.

---

---

Marey presented his doctoral thesis in medicine and designed his first device in 1859.

Inspired by a German technique, his sphygmograph innovation recorded a person’s pulse, resulting in new scientific hypotheses regarding blood circulation.

---

Marey made significant advances in his study of human walking, avian flying, and equine movement, generating numerous key discoveries along the way.

In the early 1860s, he extended his pictorial style to insects, which had particularly intricate and difficult-to-understand movements.

In his lectures at the Collège de France, where he taught from 1867 on, Marey presented drawings to illustrate his theories and the trajectory of the wings.

Above is an 1874 engraving depicting an artificial insect and his insect flight instrument illustrating the flight of insects.

---

---

Marey created a variety of instruments to investigate avian flight, including systems that could capture the smallest movement of birds, as well as their breathing and physical effort. His research laid the groundwork for early aviation theorists.

I’ll have much more on this man and his chronophotography in the unfolding chapters.

MAGIC LANTERN 19^TH CENTURY MASS-PRODUCTION
This Magic Lantern shown here is one of the oldest mass-produced during the 19th century and were made by tinsmiths for various opticians. They appear in several catalogues, unfortunately before 1840 they are rarely illustrated.

---

These are pages from various optical instrument catalogues from between 1839 and 1860 that advertised the Magic Lantern. The square Magic Lantern came in about ten different sizes and often had decorations on each side.

1860
THE DUBRONI
JULES ANDRE GABRIEL BOURDIN (1832-1893)
Jules Bourdin in 1860 invented what became known as a Dubroni. A wet Collodion camera where plates could be taken and developed right in the camera. On 21 December 1864, Bourdin applied for a patent in England (or at least a formal registration) for his apparatus named Photographe de poche Dubroni.

Some sources date the onset of production of the camera to c. 1864, rather than 1860. Some sources suggest 1860 as a reference year for wooden box models or early versions. A Dubroni kit below.

---

The key innovation here is a camera body that doubles as part of the chemical-processing or dark-room environment for the wet-collodion method. In other words: sensitising the glass plate, exposing it, and even partially developing it inside the same camera.

Referring to the Dubroni and the introduction of the solution into the camera, taken from The History of Photography . . . . . The Modern Era, Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969, p261.

---

---

The idea of a mini-lab inside the camera anticipates later portable imaging systems and the increasingly compact optical-chemical integration that would eventually feed into motion picture apparatuses

---

---

The shape of the opening of the glass chamber allows oval shots of 3.94 x 2.76 inches. Focusing is provided by a cogwheel knob (both images) and shuttering is achieved with the lens cap. The back of the camera often had a window (sometimes coloured yellow or red) through which the operator could monitor the development.

Different plate-sizes and models were made: e.g., № 1 for very small circular plates, № 2 50×50 mm, № 3 carte-de-visite size.

---

The Dubroni camera is often cited as the first successful commercially-manufactured lab-camera for wet-collodion, simplifying field processing, thereby making the process more portable. Because of that, it occupies a place in photographic history as an important transitional device: from large studio darkrooms to more portable systems.

---

And there is a question of exact attribution: some references call the inventor G. J. Bourdin (possibly a mis-rendering) rather than Jules André Gabriel. But broader consensus points to his name being Jules Bourdin.

---

Shown here is the № 2 Pocket Photographer, image Swiss Camera Museum. The Dubroni camera illustrates how photographic technologies were rapidly adapting in the 1860s, from cumbersome, dark-room-bound operations to more compact, integrated systems.

Regarding pre cinema like the technologies of image capture and projection before true cinema, this device demonstrates a convergence of optics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. The idea of a mini-lab inside the camera anticipates later portable imaging systems and the increasingly compact optical-chemical integration that would eventually feed into motion picture apparatuses.

This interior-processing camera is also a parallel to contemporary early motion picture research like devising ways to record series of images in a more compact form and to handle them rapidly. The Dubroni definitely qualifies as lesser-known, at least compared to the standard cameras of the time, and worthy of deeper archival exploration.

---

Liébert uses his enlarging apparatus below, using direct sunlight to make his 1st enlargements. The Solar Camera had to be hand-cranked to keep the condenser lens aimed at the sun, and the uninterrupted light reduced exposure times.

---

Liébert’s enlarging camera could produce 17 3/4 x 23 1/4 inch photos from a carte-de-visite size (3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″) negative in roughly two hours

---

There has always been a need and search for a way to enlarge images in photography. Using a solar microscope, Wedgwood and subsequently Talbot produced magnified images. But before the invention of the solar camera, contact printing of a large photograph on paper required an equal-sized negative.

---

---

Liébert’s concept was unique — it was a closed structure that could be installed outside, normally on a rooftop. Compare that with todays outdoor cams.

It was also built with a rack-and-pinion movement, allowing it to be rotated effortlessly toward the light, and with minimal vibration. He patented a solar enlargement technique that improved upon earlier designs, such as David Acheson Woodward’s 1857 solar camera.

Unlike Woodward’s model, which used a mirror to reflect sunlight and required frequent adjustments, Liébert’s design eliminated the mirror, directing sunlight through the negative with a hand-operated drive to keep the condenser lens focused on the sun.

This reduced vibrations and blurry exposures, though it still needed adjustments and was sensitive to external conditions like wind.

His solar camera could produce enlargements up to 17¾ × 23¼ inches from carte-de-visite-size negatives (3½ × 2½ inches) in about two hours, a significant achievement given the slow photographic papers of the time, such as salted paper and albumen.

Liébert’s design was more practical than earlier models and became widely used in North America, while Woodward’s remained popular in France. His solar camera was part of a broader movement to meet the growing demand for larger photographic prints, as patrons sought bigger portraits without the need for cumbersome large-format negatives.

The device was typically set up on rooftops to minimize disturbances and maximize sunlight exposure, which was critical due to the low sensitivity of early photographic materials.

Beyond the solar camera, Liébert was an innovator in other areas. In 1879, he opened the first Paris studio equipped with electric lighting, and he patented a method for mechanically applying liquid dyes to prints.

He also documented the Paris Commune of 1871, publishing a two-volume work, Les Ruines de Paris et de Ses Environs, 1870–1871, containing 100 albumen silver prints of the city’s destruction, including notable images of the Vendôme column’s felling.

In 1897, he and his son Georges founded A. Liébert et Cie, a company focused on silver celluloid photographic paper, though it went bankrupt in 1906.

---

I have seen that historians regard Mayhew’s series London Labour and the London Poor to be the earliest example of employing photography to make a serious literary impression on the printed page. Mayhew used his and his brothers photographs to document the harsh working circumstances of those living in London at the time.

However, he didn’t use his actual photographs.

---

With the published photograph still in its infancy in 1865, Mayhew was not interested in this tactic. Instead, he sketched the photographs he had shot. I’ve concluded that this may be the main reason why I cannot find any of his photographs. However, his illustrations seem to be everywhere.

Here are two.

---

It is some of these very photographs that I believe may have constituted the six images that are documented as being placed on that spinning ‘moving image’ apparatus, or paddlewheel. They would have to have been posed in a sequence however, for them to have made any sense.

With speculation aside, it was in the very least, illustrations which ended up spinning, and not the photographs as we have learned.

For this to be true, Mayhew would have had to have done some pre-planning. In order to use six posed, sequential photographs fourteen years in the future, it would have had to have been thought through. Or perhaps he took another series of photographs in 1865.

Here are three more.

My source on the Henry Mayhew moving images entry is Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952, Ray Zone, University Press of Kentucky, 2007, p86 where Zone has just two sentences to offer;

“Similarly, in 1865, Henry Mayhew, a British photojournalist, had persuaded his brother to create a series of six stereoscopic images. The stereo pairs were mounted on a rotating paddlewheel device for stereoscopic viewing as moving images.”

_{-Ray Zone, page 86}

---

1860
PROJECTION LANTERN EFFECTS IN THE THEATRE
Projection tricks used in Phantasmagoria shows are now seeing the projection lantern regularly used on major theatrical stages, all around the world. Below, an illustration from the Rossini opera Moïse et Pharaon in 1860.

^{Image Patrice Guerin}

---

---

In the first act of the opera Moïse et Pharaon in 1860, electricity was first applied to produce a rainbow. A lantern equipped with an electric arc is placed on a scaffolding of suitable height, five metres from the curtain and perpendicular to the canvas which represents the sky.

^{Images Patrice Guerin}

---

---

---

---

By the 1840s, we could create a permanent electric spark between two conductive elements slightly separated from each other. At the time, the electric current was supplied by a series of Bunsen batteries, sometimes up to 40 or 50 cells (illustration below shows 12 cells).

^{Image Patrice Guerin}

---

In 1849, the apparatus used in the third act of the stage play The Prophet (Le prophète, Paris 16 April), to imitate the rising sun, consisted of an arc lamp fitted with a large parabolic reflector (below left).

Engraving below on the right, of Act IV scene 2 in L’Illustration 24 April 1849.

^{Image Patrice Guerin}

---

---

1861
THE STEREOSCOPE
SAMUEL (DEXTER?) GOODALE (likely 1817-1884)
Samuel Goodale was and is, a difficult character to track down. However, I believe I have his efforts towards pre cinema correct. He lived in Cincinnati as an optician most of his life, married and had several children.

He appears to have made a trip to Texas once and was wounded and died years later as a result of his wound. Along the way, he had several patents, one being a toy pistol for children, and the one we are interested in, a hand-cranked stereoscopic-view peep show along the lines of the Casler Mutoscope except Goodale’s wasn’t for motion.

He called it the Stereoscope, for “a new and useful Improvement in Stereoscopes, … for more convenient manipulation of stereoscopic scenes and their more effective exhibition.”

---

One very interesting aspect of Goodale’s Stereoscope, was that it was not only patented in the same year as Coleman Seller’s Kinematoscope (US Patent № 31357), but it was patented on the same day. Only 47 letters patent apart, on 5 February 1861.

A comparison of Goodale’s patent № 31310 Stereoscope on the right and Sellers Kinematoscope for an “improvement in exhibiting stereoscopic pictures of moving objects” on the left, are pictured below.

No motion in Goodale’s device, just stereoviews.

---

In the Goodale toy-like Stereoscope, stereoscopic pictures were flipped by hand cranking to offer 3D relief to a single viewer. The stereoviews turned on a centre spindle, fastened and centred inside the viewing drum. The only suggestion of rapidity was how fast the viewer wanted to go from scene to scene. This was not a motion picture toy like so many suggest.

---

An incident in Texas is also referenced in the obituary as: “during the early part of the war he had a personal encounter with a Texan, growing out of a political discussion, which resulted in his receiving a wound in the leg. As soon as he was able to walk he returned to Cincinnati, and engaged in business here as an optician until he retired a few years ago from active pursuits, and went to Du Quoin to live. The paralysis which caused his death was ascribed to the wound in his leg.”

According to the records, his cause of death was “paralysis as a result of a gunshot wound.” Are these two Samuel D. Goodale’s the same man? I believe they are.

---

---

---

The magnification of the image on the screen is produced by the combination of three achromatic lenses A, B and C. The two lenses A and B are fixed, while the lens C is movable by means of a system of tubes which slide into each other.

Pictured is Arthur Chevalier, 1882.

---

An 1815 view of Chevallier’s shop at 1 Place de l’Horloge looking south from the Pont au Change bridge across the River Seine.

Chevallier’s shop is the tall building in the right-centre. Image from the 1815 edition of Chevallier du Conservateur de la Vue.

---

---

Louis Arthur Chevalier was the son of Charles, in the House of Chevalier. He applied for a patent for improvements to the Achromatic Refractor Megascope of his father in 1861. In the patent, the younger Chevalier wrote;

---

1861
THE STEREOTROPE
WILLIAM THOMAS SHAW (1837-1906)
Shaw constructs an eight-sided drum housing Stereoscopic Photographs, and views them through the Stereoscope by Wheatstone. Shaw’s device is known as the Stereotrope.

He filed British Patent № 1260 on 22 May 1860 for “improvements” that join stereoscopic viewing with Thaumatrope / Phenakistoscope-style devices, and he published at least two contemporary descriptions (a Photographic News piece, and a longer note in the Philosophical Magazine later in 1861) describing his Stereotrope.

Shaw fully understood frame-by-frame requirements and that no widely-known surviving example has been located.

---

Patent № 1260 was awarded 22 May 1860 to William Thomas Shaw and is recorded in the Patents Abridgments, listed under improvements in Thaumatrope / Phenakistoscope type devices and mentions stereoscopic arrangements and a compact fitting for albums / cases.

Below is a portion of a report on the description of Shaw’s Stereotrope (pp 70, 71) called Description of a New Optical Instrument. These pages provide a superb description of the device.

READ the full description here at Internet Archive.

Shaw himself wrote “The Stereotrope”  in Photographic News, 10 May 1861 and a fuller note “Description of a new Optical Instrument called the ‘Stereoscope” appears in Philosophical Magazine in Dec 1861.

These describe an eight-sided drum with stereoscopic photographic images which, when sequenced and viewed in the stereoscope, gave moving effects; Shaw discusses practical problems like photographing wheels so that rotation appears natural.

---

---

1861
FIRST ATTEMPT AT CELLULOID
ALEXANDER PARKES (1813-1890)
Parkes was a British inventor and chemist who played a pivotal role in the development of early plastics. Born in Birmingham, England, he is best known for creating Parkesine, one of the first synthetic plastics, in the 1850s.

Parkesine was a form of celluloid made from nitrocellulose, which could be molded when heated and retain its shape when cooled, marking a significant step in the history of materials science. Parkes patents his long worked-on plastic-based cellulose. The word celluloid will be coined by J. W. Hyatt in 1888.

---

---

---

Right, a Parkesine toothed gear wheel made by Alexander Parkes, c. 1860. The Parkensine factory railway depot at Hackney Wick in 1893. This was the end of the line for his early plastics process as by the 1950s, the factory closed.

His contributions were foundational, though he faced financial difficulties and did not fully profit from his inventions. Parkes died in 1890, leaving a lasting impact on industrial chemistry.

1861
OLIVER WENDALL HOLMES SR. (1809-1894)
The use of photography in motion-recreation again, this time by Holmes who was the first to indicate the value of photos for analyzing how various movements were actually made.

---

In 1861 he photographed street scenes of pedestrians that were caught in mid stride. He collected a great number of such views and made drawings in detail of subjects walking, eventually obtaining a kind of animators sequence chart of the movement of the knee, ankle and foot.

---

---

---

---

DOUBTS ARISE
Opposite to what Hopwood and Cook state, we have disbelieving documentation from Laurent Mannoni who states to the contrary, that Du Mont’s motion sequence photographs . . . .

---

All parties agree however, that Du Mont did demonstrate “a cylindrical apparatus for rapidly obtaining twelve successive plates” before the Société Française de Photographie.

This was reported in Bulletin de la Société française de photographie 17 January 1862, on p34 below.

---

---

Since his childhood Sellers was knowledgeable in the art of sleight-of-hand. Between 1861 and 1863 he was a member and correspondent of the British Journal of Photography. And, for a brief period of time, the Kinematoscope was known as the Motoscope.

---

Even though the Coleman Sellers Kinematoscope was briefly known as a Motoscope, it should not be confused with the Motoscope viewer manufactured by D. Appleton in 1860, pictured here.

---

Sellers posed his own two boys, shown in the right image in his factory in Philadelphia, for the photographs he took.

They were Stereoscopically produced in a double-lensed camera. Seller’s page one schematic from his patent, is on the left showing the inner workings of the Kinematoscope.

---

The term cinema comes from Kinema-toscope and is derived from the Greek word kinema-matos meaning the science of pure motion.

---

---

Sellers placed the sequential stereo images of his boys in the order he did to convey motion. Historian & author Homer Croy (How Motion Pictures Are Made, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1918, p8) calls the pictures “the first photos ever made to show motion.”

Croy went on;

---

From historian Brian Coe’s book The History of Movie Photography, (New York Zoetrope Inc., Westfield New Jersey, 1981), we see on page 41, his description of the Coleman Seller’s Kinematoscope.

---

This is recorded in his opening statement for his British patent № 1457. This device transported up to 12 sensitized glass plates past a camera lens, exposing them sequentially to record motion that could be projected in rapid succession. A synchronized moving shutter ensured that each plate was exposed only when in the correct position.

---

Du Mont’s French patent for the exact same contraption was numbered 49520. From a slotted frame, it would move ten to twelve photographic plates past the camera lens and into a lower receiving area.

To make sure the plates were only exposed when they were in the proper position, a moving shutter was synchronized. Du Mont’s invention was part of a broader effort to study and document motion through photography.

He envisioned that such devices could be used to analyze human and animal locomotion, providing a scientific basis for understanding movement.

His work was among the early attempts to create a photographic record of motion, predating more widely recognized efforts by Eadweard Muybridge and others. From Rossell p24 of Chronology of the Birth of Cinema 1833–1896, 2022 we read;

---

---

---

While du Mont’s device did not achieve widespread practical use, it represents an important step in the development of motion picture technology. His approach to capturing motion through sequential photographs laid the groundwork for future innovations in the field.

Henri Désiré Du Mont was about ten years early in 1861, in his expectation of taking instantaneous successive motion photography as we hear from Laurent Mannoni in Great Art of Light and Shadow, pp253-254 when he tells us;

_{Image Stuart Humphryes | BabelColour}

---

1862
THE ROYAL OPTICIAN AND HIS MEGALETHOSCOPE
CARLO PONTI (1823-1893)
Ponti was optician to King Victor Emanuel ll of Italy and made different models of his Megalethoscope seen directly below, for both prints and transparent views. It was a rather large viewing device, a full 5 feet long in some cases.

Both the Megalethoscope and the Alethoscope, which it essentially replaced, are devices for using a lens to magnify and provide the appearance of three dimensions when viewing single photos.

Demetrio Puppolin, a cabinetmaker whose name appears on some versions, made the Megalethoscope for Ponti. Some include elaborate marquetry and pearl inlay decorations, and in the cabinet underneath, they frequently housed photo collections.

Ponti was a Swiss-born Venetian optician and photographer. The Megalethoscope showed mostly travel photographs using daylight magnified by a large lens. The views were up to 11 by 14 inches in width.

Ponti’s photographs were mostly famous landscapes and locales.

---

---

---

Mirrors are placed inside the doors of the Megalethoscope and when light is directed onto the photo, a daytime view was obtained. A night view was achieved by lighting the rear of the photo. These large magnified photographs were seen with a magnifying glass.

Here are some more examples of the day-night effect the Megalethoscope offered.

---

Ponti published a number of photo albums in the 1860s under the title Ricordi di Venezia. He also processed and published photographs shot by other Venetian photographers.

In the last years of the Grand Tour, Ponti created and published much of his pictures for tourists and art and architectural enthusiasts. He did this in vast quantities and distributed his work to a global customer base via shops in America, England and of course Europe.

There were three different finishes available for these pre cinema instruments: plain walnut, inlaid work, and sculptured embellishments. Each of these examples are shown above.

The Megaletoscopio Privilegiato was a unique version designed to accommodate curved plates of which the Museum of Art and History in Brussels, owns twenty-seven.

There is very little published information about Lieutenant L. Wachter. He does not prominently appear in standard pre cinema histories like those of Mannoni, Rossell, or Hecht and many other histories.

However, this disk has occasionally surfaced in secondary literature, especially in the context of early motion studies that predated Muybridge, challenging the Anglo-centric narrative of motion photography’s primacy.

This image of the Wachter disk is obtained from the George Eastman House journal IMAGE, volume1, № 4, April 1952, titled The Horse in Gallop.

---

In the article, the unidentified writer states: “Wachter’s hand drawn pictures correspond exactly to Muybridge’s photographs…”  which is debatable, though they are more accurate than other attempts of the period. Despite the visual authority that this disk appears to carry, the gait shown is not accurate, as confirmed by Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies beginning in 1878.

---

1. Fairman Rogers in The Art Interchange in 1879
2. The Scientific American Supplement on 9 August 1879

This is because Rogers played these drawings he said, in his own Zoetrope as I stress, once again, sixteen years before Muybridge. Never once, in any history on Muybridge, by any historian, have I ever seen the name Wachter listed.

---

The article in the Scientific American Supplement was ‘The Zootrope / Action of Animals in Motion.’ It’s on page 2991, Issue 188, 1879. You can read the full entry here starting at the top of the page, in the first column.

---

This is the Lieutenant Wachter Galloping Horse Phenakistiscope disk from 1862, lithographed with applied colour, and a diametre of eleven inches. It was gifted to the George Eastman Museum from the Collection of Gabriel Cromer (1873–1934), collector of one of the most significant assemblies of early French photography in the world.

_{Animation HOTDOC}

---

artists and scientists were exploring motion cycles visually, decades before photographic confirmation

---

Wachter was apparently a popular guy back in 1862, but not so much today. Only one other historian I found, was Gordon Hendricks who cited Wachter briefly in The Edison Motion Picture Myth on pages 168 and 169 (below) when he refers to the Scientific American Supplement article The Zootrope / Action of Animals in Motion by Fairman Rogers.

Like many of the obscure pre cinema pioneers who pop up in history with their contribution, and then disappear, little is written on their inventions such as patents or the apparatuses themselves.

Such is the case with this Wachter who by everything I can find, built no device for viewing, but just the disk itself.

It’s important to note that I have no information whatsoever, that suggests Lieutenant Wachter was studying locomotion or the gait of the animal in creating the disk.

My conclusion is, that his only desire was to see the motion entertainment of the horse at gallop. And if we know that Rogers saw the disk turning then we must admit we believe Wachter saw it as well.

---

The Pantascopic Camera had an achromatic lens and was driven by clockwork motor. The images were of a 110-degree view on 7.5 x 12-inch flat Collodion plates.

As the motor rotated the camera, the glass plate was moved past a slot in the camera back, to make the exposure.

THREE CENTURIES OF HOME THEATRE
The Magic Lantern was once the cinema of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It was once as common in homes as 4K home theatre is today. That little tin box with a chimney was a vital component that made up the art of seeing pictures move.

^{Artwork attributed to the painter Jan Anton Garemyn around 1750}

---

The Magic Lantern, a projector with a future that would inevitably become one of the most famous and entertaining discoveries in history.

Lanterns were found everywhere: schools, homes, theatres, festivals, fairs, churches and most other public places.

---

Like Revolving Disks and Volvelles, Moving Books are considered a forerunner of motion combined with story-telling which along with all other motion-related studies, contributed to Cinematography.

WATCH a short video on this man and his work.

---

---

Robert Sabuda, famed American pop-up book artist who won the Movable Book Society’s first Meggendorfer Prize in 1998, has been quoted as saying;

“Lothar Meggendorfer used to really freak people out. Actually, Lothar Meggendorfer still freaks people out, and with good reason. His movable books—those of pop-ups, pull tabs, image wheels—raised the bar for the craft of paper engineering during his heyday in the late ‘Boos. They were absolutely stunning.”

These moveable books, or Meggendorfers as they are called, continue to captivate readers with their clever mechanisms and amusing illustrations. They are a cousin to the Mechanical Magic Lantern Slide, only made of paper.

---

---

---

Due to the complexity of his devices, Meggendorfer’s books could easily be damaged by excited children.

Being a very compassionate and caring writer and illustrator, he announced Comic Actors with this cautionary poem for the children;

---

Meggendorfer’s masterpiece was Internationaler Zirkus (ca. 1888). A special entry in this history, as it foretells of today’s multi-screen theatres.

Playing on the popular theme of the circus, Meggendorfer created a multiplex wide-screen cinema-book that features six individual screens under the big top.

---

Internationaler Zirkus unfolds in an accordion fashion similar to that of the Tunnel Book, so that it can be seen at once in its entirety. A flap on each panel pulls down to reveal different three-dimensional scenes.

---

---

The McLoughlin Brothers of New York were the 1st to create these pre cinema movable books in America. In the 1880s, they published two series of 3D children’s books called the Little Showman’s Series.

---

---

In June 1862 Liang reports his Motoroscope is “working,” having tried obtaining Stereoscopic motion via the Zoetrope unsuccessfully. With his Motoroscope he placed a long band with slots on the outside and pictures on the inside, rotating around two vertical rollers.

---

THE LITTLE WOODEN VILLAGE
Liang was combining the idea of the revolving Zoetrope with a Stroboscopic disk which was to offer a moving image in relief. After two years of improvements, he presented the Motoroscope to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts in Edinburgh.

1862
THE WATER-BABIES
CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875)
A set of twenty-four sequenced pre cinema lantern slides emerged directly out of Charles Kingsley’s famous children’s story The Water-Babies, an exceptionally popular fantasy first serialized in Macmillan’s Magazine August 1862.

---

---

---

Kingsley was one of the few Pastors to initially accept Darwin’s theories on evolution. But Kingsley later came to his senses, and used incongruous caricatures to depict Darwin’s theory as nothing more than comical absurdity.

---

---

---

The twenty-four slides came packed in a leatherette box with three sections;

🎦 eight inches by five inches story booklet
🎦 illustrations by Warwick Goble
🎦 24 3 1/4 inches square slides

The set was produced by Butcher and Sons, London. It contained three chapters with eight slides per chapter.

These images de Luikerwaal

---

READ Charles Kingsley’s famous children’s story The Water-Babies, here at Internet Archive.

Published in chapters, the story continues;

🎞️ Chapter 2 continues Vol.  Vi. May-October, 1862 https://archive.org/details/macmillansmagazi06macmuoft/page/n505/mode/2up

🎞️ Chapter 3 concludes Volume VII; November 1862-Apr 1863 https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_qWkJAAAAQAAJ/page/n93/mode/2up

---

Kingsley wrote the story for his baby son Grenville. With respect to whether water babies, like fairies, exist, Kingsley closed by saying;

---

WATCH the 1978 live action / animated film The Water-Babies, produced by Peter Shaw and Studio Miniatur Filmowych Poland, directed by Lionel Jeffries, with James Mason.

1862
THOMPSON’S REVOLVER CAMERA
Called Thompson’s Revolver Camera, no one seems to know who Thompson was. No research to date has uncovered his first name or dates of birth and death etc. What I do know is the Thompson’s Revolver Camera, was manufactured by the Parisian instrument maker A. Briois.

Not all of the unusual cameras of this era focused on concealment, as shown by Thompson’s Revolver Camera. The Revolver Photographique, was patented in 1862.

---

---

Spend three minutes and SEE Curator Colin Harding of the National Science and Media Museum tell us about Thompson’s Revolver Camera.

---

---

---

Thompson’s revolver was not commercially successful. Serial numbers on surviving revolvers indicate that perhaps less than 100 were made (Science Museum Group).

Images Royal Photographic Society Collection at Victoria and Albert Museum.

The one I have pictured directly above on the left is from the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum shows serial № 15.

On the right and not very clear, is Serial № 44, both from the Science Museum Group.

---

FAST FORWARD TO 1938
I stumbled on this item by accident and would not normally include it as it falls completely outside my field of study in terms of years. However, I must share this Motion Picture Revolver of 1938 because it’s a marvellous companion to Thompson’s Revolver Camera, and all other pistol cameras. This revolver takes both still and Motion Pictures.

---

Pulling the trigger simultaneously fires a round and snaps a picture.

Above is the story in an unidentified newspaper or magazine of the 1938 Motion Picture Gun Camera.

---

The camera was somehow configured so that each time the trigger was pulled, a photo was snapped simultaneously.  These black-and-white still images of times either just prior to — or more likely just after — impact left something to the imagination, unlike today’s streaming video (police cam).

No doubt, the revolver camera was lens to which you don’t want to say cheese, smile or wait for the flash.

---

---

Up until now in history, all we’ve had in revolvers, rifles, cannons and pistol cameras, is still pictures. Even in the Chronophotography of Marey, Muybridge and others we have had to place the photos in sequence before motion was initiated.

Until now.

It took until the 20^th century before we had a weapon-shaped camera of any type that would take motion pictures.

---

1862 -1863
PEPPER’S GHOST
JOHN HENRY PEPPER (1821 – 1900) and HENRY DIRCKS (1806 – 1873)
Combining a little of theatrical magic and a magic lantern show is the work of Dircks and Pepper.

The final outcome – Pepper’s Ghost.

As the story goes, an engineer from Liverpool named Henry Dircks created a model of an apparatus capable in theory of projecting a life-like ghost onto a stage before an audience.

---

As Thomas Weynants has correctly pointed out, this appearance of a ghost-like projection was in fact the “illuminating [of] a real actor, dressed as a ghost” (Weynants, Early Visual Media / Pre Cinema / The Ghost in the Theatre: Pepper’s Ghost Effect).

Enter John Henry Pepper, a chemist from London who takes it a step further; building a practical working model for use in the theatre. 

---

---

Pepper’s Ghost has been incorporated by Hitchcock, Disney, Coppola, and used in films like A Christmas Carol, Macbeth and Hamlet

---

---

---

Here is Professor Pepper’s Ghost Illusion explained in detail from three consecutive pages (401, 402, 403) in Letters on Natural Magic, by Sir David Brewster published by John Murray, London in 1832.

A contemporary description if you will.

---

---

---

---

As opposed to Peppers Ghost, Dircks referred to the phenomenon as Dircksian Phantasmagoria. On the popularity of the illusion itself, Dircks made this comment in his work The Ghost. READ it here at Internet Archive.

---

---

Here we have what the Illustrated London News of 2 May, 1863 called “Spectre Drama at The Polytechnic Institution.”

On pp481 and 486 the accompanying article states “and he passes his sword through the ghost, to the immense terror of the audience….” It looked so real.

---

The two men that created this “Spectre Drama.” A portion of pre cinema that remains a necessity for many horror films and even beyond.

---

---

---

---

The work of Karl Abbe within physics and particularly optics, was instrumental both in the development of lenses for the field of Cinematography, but also in both laser physics and fibre optics.

Bronze statues of Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe at the University of Jena.

^{Image Jan-Peter Kasper}

---

From the lenses found in antiquity, to those of today, what a beautiful optical instrument a lens is. DYK, everything we see in life comes through a lens. Our eyes allow me to say everything. And when you watch a movie, you’re watching something made through a lens, with your lens.

1863
THE PHOTODROME
THOMAS ROSE (1802-1872)
This is the second optical instrument created by Rose for showing spectral illusions. The Photodrome was said to be superior to the Kalotrope, inasmuch as it offered to the lecturer an effective means of presenting deceptions to a large audience.

The Photodrome differed from the Kalotrope in several important points: It dispensed with the discs of apertures, and left the device disc with its face fully exposed to the spectators.

---

no pictures of any kind, illustrations or depictions of the Thomas Rose Photodrome of 1863 can be found in thirty-four years of searching

---

Here is what the Illustrated London News of January 1863 had to say about a presentation of the Rose Photodrome by John Henry Pepper:

POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION — “Among the pantomimes of the season we must not forget to mention the dissolving-view representation of Cinderella at this hall of science. Both as a fairy tale and a pantomime this performance is excellent, and includes some new effects which will ensure its complete popularity. ….. Professor Pepper, too, in “A Strange Lecture” explains some of the wonders produced by the “Photodrome” a new and beautiful optical apparatus invented and constructed by Thomas Rose, Esq., of Glasgow, which causes phantoms to appear at will, so as to produce the full impression of reality, though at the same time a real body will pass through them. A new source of illusion is thus prepared for the stage, and will be taken advantage of by experienced managers.”

^{– from an advertisement in the Illustrated London News, under the title ‘Victorian London – Photography and Optical – Section – Victorian Optical Devices – Photodrome’, 3 January 1863}

1864
THE PHANTASMAGORIA IN BOOK FORM
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS AND SPECTROPIA
A fine example of an inexpensive optical Illusionary toy for children is a book with multiple-coloured pages of images and drawings, which used Apparent Motion to benefit from.

---

---

Brown called the popularity of seances and the desire to communicate with lost souls “the absurd follies of spiritualism.”

Brown notes in his work Spectropia, or Surprising Spectral Illusions Showing Ghosts Everywhere, New York, 1865;

---

Using only the natural science of Apparent Motion formerly known as Apparent Motion, Brown presented these ghosts to mostly children, with his sixteen plates in Spectropia. Unlike Spiritualism, Spectropia was based on actual science. We can see how the eye and mind can be betrayed.

---

When stared at for a few seconds, the image would be emblazoned on the back of the eye (retina) and remain for the same period.

The viewer would then turn to the next page which was white, and would see the ghoulish character dance on the page as the eye moved.

Because the page was white, the character would appear above the page.

This was due to the latent image on our retina and, that tiny black dot/asterisk you see inside the red circle.

Exercise:
Find the little black dot or asterisk in each image, and then fix your gaze on it for 15 – 20 seconds and experience the ghosts for yourself.

Look at a white wall, ceiling, or better still you’re white computer screen right after and the phantom will manifest itself on your freshly spooky retina.

---

---

---

1864
THE WÖTHLYTYPE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS
JACOB WÖTHLY (1823-1873)
Jacob Wöthly anglicised to Wothly, was a portrait photographer and photographic chemist who is a now-obscure but once-well-known photographic inventor active from the 1850s to about 1873, mainly in Germany and Belgium, because he patented a photographic printing process that used uranium salts to produce images of exceptional tonal range.

This quote from Wöthly appears in contemporary accounts I found, reproducing the patent specification. It’s the closest thing to a primary procedural statement I have:

---

The Wöthlytype was a collodion-based positive printing process, using uranium nitrate in combination with silver salts. Wöthly argued that uranium made prints more light-resistant and gave a unique warm tone. He patented variants in Belgium, Britain, and Germany.

The British patent No 1766 of 1864 was filed under Joseph (Jacob) Wöthly of Brussels. Initially hyped in photographic journals such as The Photographic News (1865), but soon dismissed.

Pictured is a Wöthlytype portrait of an unknown woman (1861 – 1865) by Jacob Wöthly. A remarkably clear photograph using uranium.

Fox Talbot poo-poo’d the process but called it “a valuable contribution to science.” Other chemists pointed out that the radioactive toxicity hadn’t been studied enough, and that the chemical instability was obvious.

---

Wöthly’s chemical innovations were often discussed in the same periodicals that reported on optical projection and lantern photography, like in the Photographic News, and British Journal of Photography. His process was marketed as being well-suited to “projection positives,” an early bridge between still photography and projected images.

---

Photograph courtesy The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2016, The Met NY.

1864
This Wöthlytype according to The Met Collection, “provides evidence of the professional partnership shared by these two early pioneers of photographic chemistry; the image was exhibited separately by both Wothly and Mangel du Mesnil in Vienna (1864) and Paris (1865) under variant titles, and is believed to be a sample photograph sent to individuals interested in licensing the process. In addition to its unusual process, this photograph is noteworthy for its droll subject – a mise en scène of three Italian shepherds picnicking on a studio floor.”

---

It is uncertain (but likely) if Wöthly’s research with this radioactive element contributed to his early death in 1873, after-all, Uranyl Nitrate is a deadly substance. It is a lymphocyte mitogen that, when ingested in any way, results in acute tubular necrosis and the shutting down of the brain, liver, lungs, and kidneys (CDC).

It’s unlikely that Wöthly used anything close to modern radiological controls when handling these chemicals. He died age 50.

1864
INTEGRAL PHOTOGRAPHY
LOUIS DUCOS DU HAURON (1837-1920)
Du Hauron was a masterful thinker and creator. More than once, he has been caught thinking way ahead of his time. He was a pioneer of colour and 3D photographic methods among other things.

_{Figures 1 and 2}

In 1864 he was imagining what we now call a ‘light field’ capture system—something not fully realized until the 21st century (consider Lytro cameras,) but today is fully understood as Integral Photography. This contraption was designed to capture a multi-view image—a precursor to light-field photography.

The staggered 290‑lens array projected multiple perspectives onto a single photosensitive surface within a dark box. Each lens captured a slightly shifted viewpoint, theoretically enabling depth reconstruction when viewed or projected properly.

All illustrations are taken from his French patent № 61976, of 1 March 1864, and found in Inventing Cinema Machines, Gestures, and Media History, written by Benoit Turquety, 2014, on pp125-133.

---

Figure 6 is Du Hauron’s multiple lens camera concept for photography of the phases of motion. A band with openings acts as a series of shutters passing behind rows and columns of lenses, A and B, to expose miniature frames. From his French patent № 61976, 1 March 1864.

---

The dark box was equipped with two fabric bands that were pulled along by a motor (C+C’) and crank (D+D’) [figure 3].

---

Du Hauron’s ahead-of-its-time-thinking foreshadowed:

📷🎥 Lenticular printing: those 3D postcards and novelty prints where the image appears to shift or move.
📷🎥 Stereoscopy and autostereoscopy: 3D without glasses.
📷🎥 Modern light-field photography: capturing rays of light from different angles to refocus or render 3D later.
📷🎥 VR/AR imaging systems: where a scene needs to be viewed from multiple perspectives dynamically.

_{Figure 4}

---

He wasn’t just tinkering with colour—he also patented an anaglyph 3D device in 1891 and coined terms like the Melanochromoscope and Chromographoscope, both of which I have posted here.

---

He laid the early groundwork for integral imaging, colour photography, and 3‑D capture. His idea of a “290-lens dark room” is a real, concrete step toward ideas used in today’s computational and immersive imaging systems.

An accountant by profession, Rowsell is notably recognized for patenting the both devices 1 February 1864, apparatuses for viewing photographic pictures, coins, and medals, also applicable to producing drawings and paintings (British Patent № 270).

He may have also made improvements to the device, though the patent lapsed in 1877 due to non-payment of additional stamp duty.

---

The Wheatstone Stereoscope is pictured here.

The Graphoscope supposedly grounded on an 1864 patent of Rowsell.

The Roswell Stereographoscope combining stereo vision and magnification.

^{Images College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona}

---

The Stereographoscope emerged as a variant of Rowsell’s Graphoscope, with stereo lenses added to the original design to enable stereoscopic viewing. This development likely occurred after the initial 1864 patent, as the Stereographoscope is noted as a later enhancement.

The device retained the Graphoscope’s large magnifying lens but included stereo lenses, making it versatile for both monoscopic and stereoscopic images.

---

^{Images College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona}

The huge magnifying lens moves on hinged brass arms and may be swung in as a magnifier in place of the stereo viewer. The stereoviews are held in place by an elaborate hinged holder with a frosted glass backing.

---

The upper piece is connected to the base through back hinges, and the inclination may be altered using an ornamental supporting arm positioned in various slots in the base. The magnifying lens folds into the base when compacted.

The Stereographoscope was popular in the 1870s, with examples produced by companies like Negretti & Zambra and H. Hughes, often featuring Rowsell’s patent label. These devices were used for viewing both stereo cards and single photographs, with adjustable focus and height settings.

---

---

---

---

This, from Du Hauron, the man we thought was only into colour photography.

---

---

---

---

1864
LOUIS ARTHUR DUCOS DU HAURON (1837-1920)
Du Hauron’s wish for a motion picture photographing system (Patent № 61976 March 1864) was to photograph “all transformations” of motion as he wrote;

---

Du Hauron did more than just speculate about future films. He provided an iconographic sneak peek. His March 1^st patent addressed cinematography using diagrams, and presented an early apparatus intended to capture successive movement.

Thanks to Scott S. Taylor, Manuscripts Archivist at Georgetown University, Booth Family Centre for Special Collections for these images.

---

This device had rotating lenses for this reason; to reproduce photographically scenes with all transformations.

---

Du Hauron used a periphrase to describe his cine camera; “meant for reproducing photographically any scene with all the transformations it underwent during a determined time.”

Thanks to Scott S. Taylor, Manuscripts Archivist at Georgetown University, Booth Family Centre for Special Collections for these images.

---

Du Hauron demonstrated greater accuracy and went above and beyond the representation of a moving image in a caveat of 20 January 1865 appended to this original patent; “My lens mechanism makes sure time has much more rapid wings than the ones mentioned by poets.”

Pictured here are pp3 and 4.

---

Louis Ducos du Hauron continued in the patent rider from 20th January 1865, “the construction of a building” thereby for-seeing time lapse photography and perhaps even the Biograph Star Theatre of 1901;

---

This is the perfection of time-lapse cinematography, a film that W. K. L. Dickson made in New York city in 1901 by photographing the take down of the Star Theatre from across the street from the Biograph offices window.

Dickson took one frame every 4 minutes during the daytime only, over 30 days.

This is what Du Hauron prophesied of 37 years (1901-1864) before the building came down and 25 years (1889-1864) before celluloid allowed it to be filmed.

---

---

---

---

In the September 1920 issue of the magazine L’Illustration it was written that Louis Ducos du Hauron foresaw the cinematograph as early as 1864. It only took them 56 years.

They said;

This film taken on boulevard Scaliger or any remnant, has never been found. No evidence exists that du Hauron built his camera.

---

Additionally, there is no evidence that he actually built the cinematographic view and projection cameras described in his patents.

Pictured is Du Hauron’s Patent No. 61976 from 1 March 1864 p11 figures 4 and 5.

Thanks to Scott S. Taylor, Manuscripts Archivist at Georgetown University, Booth Family Center for Special Collections for these images.

---

In 1925, French film historian and contemporary of du Hauron, Georges-Michel Coissac (1868-1946) published L’Eden des Lumière, La Ciotat et le Cinéma and in it he does not question that the machines, including the ‘rammer film’ existed.

Coissac wrote;

---

In a very troubling letter sent to the Lumière brothers in 1896, du Hauron makes it clear and in almost demanding terms that he has missed out on something big.

He wrote;

---

I would love to see that film of the paver and his rammer on Boulevard Scaliger in Agen, France, if it had been taken. Below, a portion of Boulevard Scaliger in Agen, France the way it looks today.

---

In 1864 Swann patented the transfer process for making carbon prints, a permanent photographic process. By adding the transfer step, Swann was able to easily make photographs with a full tonal range using specular light. Swann in his lab.

---

Pictured here is a carbon print known as A Wet Day on the Boulevard, Paris, from 1894 by Alfred Stieglitz housed at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The darker regions of most carbon prints appear glossier than the lighter tones.

---

Shown here is the detail of A Wet Day on the Boulevard, Paris, in normal light (left) and specular light (right). The detail in specular light illustrates the rough texture of the paper. Swann is also known for inventing the first working incandescent light bulb.

1864
THE LIÉBERT SOLAR CAMERA
ALPHONSE JUSTIN LIÉBERT (1827–1914)
Liébert’s uses his enlarging apparatus using direct sunlight to make his first enlargements. The Solar Camera had to be hand-cranked to keep the condenser lens aimed at the sun, but the uninterrupted light reduced exposure times.

---

---

---

_{Animation HOTDOC}

Upon delving into the work of Caroline Chik on her history of the sequential photography of movement, I have concluded as has she, that Gaspard-Félix Tournachon aka Nadar, may not have desired just to produce the motion of the photograph alone, but may also have made his goal in producing his and his brother’s rotating portraits, in preparation of becoming a Willème Photosculpture.

---

---

From the article, she states; “If Nadar’s two rotating portraits function as true sequences of movement, their origin would nevertheless be located, according to another hypothesis, in a field of application of photography as curious as it is outdated, which appeared in France in the 1860s.“

---

The hypothesis that Nadar had sculpture on his mind when taking these rotating portraits comes from Chik’s source, historian André Rouillé (1986, p. 25, note 38), as he cites a note written by Paul Tournachon on the back of the 12 portraits which reads; “exuries taken for the… sculpture at the Bd des Capucines 35, by my father Félix Nadar, around 1865. Portrait of his friend Arosa. P. Nadar 23 Feb. 1911.”

The front and back of the Albumen print are pictured here. The handwritten message from his son, Paul Nadar, suggests that dad may have taken these photos with the intention of making sculptures the way Willème had, or with his help.

_{Image gallica.bnf}

---

As Caroline Chik tells us, “a preparatory test for the creation of a sculpture using the method, in vogue at the time, of Photosculpture.” This new motion art form, patented in 1861 by François Willème, introduced Willème’s glass dome, the Photosculpture de France, a new commercial endeavour initiated by Willème in which the 24 photographs in Willème’s case, could be taken and turned into the Photosculpture.

In the early 1860s a modern cupola, forty feet wide and thirty feet high constructed of iron mullions with blue and white panes of glass, was erected near the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile. Willème called it his Photosculpture de France. It housed a perimetre ring of cameras directed inward at a central subject.

---

To create a Photosculpture, Willème arranged his subject on a circular platform surrounded by 24 cameras; one every 15 degrees, to capture their Silhouette simultaneously. Each camera produced a set of photo-profiles, for a complete likeness of his subject in three dimensions.

LAMPASCOPES AND PANTOGRAPHS
To create a 3D Photosculpture image of his subject he made the information in each layer accessible by projecting each image onto a screen using a Lampascope projecting lantern. Then using a Pantograph attached to a cutter, he traced each profile with the Pantograph.

Before leaving the Photosculpture de France studio, the model was allowed to glimpse a Lampascope projection of their image, and the Pantograph used to reproduce his or her features into their own personal 3D Photosculpture.

---

---

---

Finally let’s look at just one example of what the work of Auguste François Willème’s (et al) Photosculpture has given us. What ORBITVU USA @ORBITVU_USA (on X) and their industry calls ‘Automated Product Photography.’

Now, where have we seen this before?

Meet our most versatile #OrbitvuUSA machine, the ALPHASTUDIO XXL. 👋 In one system, you get:
📷 Oversized LED lighting
📷 Pin board option for flatlays
📷 Ability to shoot stills, 360° spin and video https://t.co/aRi9DFh0rH#AutomatedPhotography pic.twitter.com/UP7gpMdcKZ

— ORBITVU USA (@ORBITVU_USA) July 25, 2019

This Frederick Varley should not be confused with the Frederick Varley of Group of Seven fame.

1865
THE CYCLOIDOTROPE
ALFRED PUMPHERY (1830–1913)
Pumphery markets his Cycloidotrope, that will “trace an infinite variety of geometric designs” upon smoked or darkened glass slides for the Magic Lantern -MOMA.

Children today know it as the Spirograph.

^{Left image de Luikerwaal}

---

---

The Cycloidotrope is a unique mechanically operated Magic Lantern slide that forms an endless variety of geometrical designs on a purposely-filthy grimy glass disc while being projected. Turning a hand crank produced white lines on the screen.

^{Images Antiq Photo Gallery}

---

A mahogany box houses the slide, a set of tongs for holding a glass disc, and some discs. A stylus bar on the Cycloidotrope may be adjusted in length and angle.

^{Images Antiq Photo Gallery, de Luikerwaal}

---

A pivoted arm and a stylus trace a pattern in the soot of the smoky black disk, appearing on the screen as brilliant white lines. Below, a Cycloidotrope story in the Scientific American p390, 19 December 1885. Spirograph was made by both Milton Bradley and Kenner.

---

On the screen, these patterns may be seen emerging, crossing, twisting and turning. Most Cycloidotropes or Invisible Drawing Master, measured 11 3/4 inches by 4 3/4 inches.

^{Images Antiq Photo Gallery, de Luikerwaal}

---

---

Tip-toeing a little outside the study of pre cinema, I will simply state there were others who devised Harmonographs.

Two prominent names were Marc Dechevren’s Campylograph, and Robert Moritz’s Cyclo-Harmonograph, pictured here. There were others.

---

The term Choreutoscope Tournant specifically refers to a version that used a rotating disk (the tournant part, meaning rotating in French) to display sequential images. It’s one of the many inventions from the 19th century that explored ways to animate images before the advent of what became known as moving pictures.

---

This intermittent movement is fundamental to how modern film projectors and cameras work, as it allows each image to be presented clearly before the next one appears, creating the illusion of smooth motion. Could this image be the Choreutoscope Tournant?

I found it in a book called The Wonders of Science, or Popular Description of Modern Inventions, by Louis Figuier, 1867. The image was cited as an “early Molteni apparatus.” I ask, because I’ve yet to see an image specifically named the Choreutoscope Tournant. READ it here at Internet Archive.

---

A series of drawings, typically six, were painted on a glass or mica disk. A common subject was a dancing skeleton, with each image showing a slightly different pose. The disk was mounted within a wooden frame with a viewing window.

When a hand-crank was turned, the disk rotated, and the synchronized shutter would expose each image in rapid succession. Light from a lamp (or even daylight) would pass through the painted images and be projected onto a screen, making the subject appear to move.

While English physician Lionel Smith Beale is credited with inventing the Choreutoscope in 1866, he didn’t patent it. This allowed others to develop their own versions.

The Choreutoscope Tournant specifically refers to the version invented by French instrument maker Alfred Molteni in 1865, which used a rotating disk and an efficient intermittent movement. It’s extraordinary that Figuier does not name the contraption, only the maker.

I have found nothing more on it in 35 years. Was this motion picture viewing device the Turning Choreutoscope talked about as having been made by François Marie Alfred Molteni?  Is my search complete?

1865
THE PHOTOGRAPHICON CDV VIEWER
CHARLES ROBINSON
The photographic and Carte de Visite frenzy that followed Disdéri’s invention, spawned a slew of new devices designed specifically for viewing and storing small images. Robinson’s Photographicon of 1865 refers to a patented device designed for viewing cartes-de-visite, which were small photographic portraits popular in the 19th century.

It was a tabletop viewer, often ornate, used to display and scroll through a collection of these photographs. The device, credited to a patent dated 11 April 1865, was manufactured by D. Millard and Company in Cincinnati, Ohio.

---

Entertaining Carte de Visites in the parlour created a need for viewing boxes. Robinson’s Photographicon of 1865 contained two roller drums with fifty printed paper CDV frames, mounted on a roll of linen. The handle was turned and the CDV came into view just like a Moving Panorama.

Some cases were decorated with porcelain or brass-domed buttons.

---

Lids came with one or two windows for viewing. Patented 11 April 1865 (US Patent Nº 50498), Robinson’s Photographicon included directions on how to use the contraption. The Photographicon, described as a small oblong box with two four-inch-diametre cylinders, a cambric band to mount up to 100 pictures, and a knob to view them under glasses set in the top.

The device is noted as a desirable alternative to albums for retaining and exhibiting photographs, and Charles Robinson received a diploma for it.

The patent read “Apparatus for Preserving and Exhibiting Photographic Pictures.”

---

Left; A Portrait of André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, by Disderi and Company in the 1860s. An Albumen print Carte de Visite mount.

Right; An uncut sheet of Carte de Visite photographs, by Disdéri, 1860s. Albumen print, 7 3/4 x 9 inches. CDV’s were 2 1/8 x 3 ½ inches.

---

the handle was turned and the CDV came into view just like a Moving Panorama

---

---

---

---

1866
THE CHOREUTOSCOPE
LIONEL SMITH BEALE (1828-1906)
Beale animates drawn pictures using his Choreutoscope (also spelled Chorentoscope or Choreutoscope). This very simple optical toy is hand-held and handle-cranked, which draws a lantern slide horizontally through the apparatus using a small gear. Six images are seen successively for a split-second.

No different than a silent movie, however the skeleton dances slowly or quickly, based on the speed you crank.

Many museum timelines, exhibits, and popular pre cinema histories credit the invention to English physician Lionel Smith Beale (1828–1906), noting that he demonstrated it (including the dancing skeleton) at London’s Royal Polytechnic Institution.

He never patented the design, which allowed others to copy and commercialize it.

---

Contemporary 1870 articles (e.g., in The Popular Educator) describe John Beale producing “The Dancing Skeleton” Choreutoscope with an “intermittent motion-piece,” along with related devices like his earlier “Automated Picture” (or “automatic face”) apparatus.

He manufactured versions that were later improved and patented by others, such as English optician William C. Hughes in 1884. The mix-up likely stems from both men sharing the surname and working in London during the same era. Some sources have conflated the physician (known for microscopy) with the instrument maker.

---

SEE a very personal and up-close video on the Beale Choreutoscope being operated and handled as if it was you. Runs 1:45.

Early animation from 1866 with sound on.

---

---

SEE another Beale Choreutoscope in action from our friends at Museu del Cinema running 1:14

---

---

Here, the lantern slide which is drawn through the apparatus using a small gear. The History of Science Museum at Oxford University states that the Beale Choreutoscope was the “first object within pre cinema that worked with the same principle of the Cinematograph.”

---

N.B.
There is some speculation as to when Beale projected his drawn pictures;

---

SEE Beale’s Choreutoscope and how it works in this short Museu del Cinema production. Place it in a Magic Lantern or hand-hold it.

It shows an 1884 William C. Hughes lantern slide-carrier made specifically for the Choreutoscope.

---

Pictured here is Beale’s Choreutoscope of a crying baby, 7.87 by 1.77 inches, in six phases of sequential motion. Hand-painted with paper-taped edges, mahogany conveyance frame, in a metal slide-holder.

Engraved as № 5671 manufactured by Charles Baker to Lionel Smith Beale’s exact design specs, at 244 High Holborn, London. Period sources and recent scholarship refer to it explicitly as the “Beale-Baker” model.

---

Beale never patented his design and like other pre cinema pioneers who failed to do the same, it was quickly copied by others. One being William Charles Hughes (1828-1906), an English optician of whom I will speak more about later.

1866
HONOURABLE MENTION
WILLIAM PUMPHREY (1817-1905)
Little is known of William Pumphrey except he dabbled in stereoscopic projection and was a photographer beginning in 1849 in York UK while teaching science at Bootham School. He learned the art of light pictures from Samuel Walker, one of York’s first professional photographers.

Pumphrey later became superintendent of a private lunatic asylum in York. His photography was mostly for personal pleasure and he used the Magic Lantern to exhibit them at Bootham Park Hospital. It is documented Pumphrey used two revolving stereoscopes to show fifty of his stereoviews. Nothing else can be found.

Pumphrey was a notable figure in the early history of photography in York, UK, with a particular interest in Stereoscopic projection and photography. Finding Daguerreotypes restrictive, Pumphrey adopted the Calotype process around 1852.

Some of Pumphrey’s works are preserved in institutions like the National Gallery of Art (e.g., Ripon Cathedral from the Southeast, c. 1855, and The Chapter House, St. Mary’s Abbey, 1853) and the J. Paul Getty Museum. His Calotype print of Walmgate Bar (1853) is also documented in auction records, highlighting his contribution to early photographic studies.

_{Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/ Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal}

Pictured is a William Pumphrey plate from his portfolio Photographic Views of York and its Environs of the Micklegate Bar in York England, one of the city’s four main medieval gates, in 1853. And, the way it looks today on the right.

Pumphrey moved to Bristol later in life, where he died in 1905 at age 88. His death marked the passing of one of York’s photographic pioneers, though he was less celebrated than contemporaries due to his relatively short professional photography career.

---

FROM KALOTROPE TO PHOTODROME
The Kalotrope is a device made of two concentric / wheels/ discs (one a device disc painted with patterns or images, the other a wheel of apertures that rotate in opposite directions. Viewed through the apertures, the pattern appears animated or produces striking symmetrical / stroboscopic designs.

Rose later adapted the idea into a lantern-projected version called the Photodrome which I will talk about soon, which used a Magic Lantern beam interrupted by a rotating aperture wheel to create very short flashes and vivid colour effects.

The arrangement of disks for the Rose Kalotrope consists of two concentric wheels moving in contrary directions. The part of the apparatus that requires special explanation and illustration is the device disk and the disk of apertures.

---

Rose suggests a 3D moving picture using the Phenakistoscope and using 100 cameras taking Stereoscopic Pictures

---

The first disk is the device disk (No. 2 left), placed on the hinder wheel, and the second, the disk of apertures (No. 1 right), on the front wheel.

Each is capable of an almost infinite variety of characters. Rose wrote on his colour experiments “Presentations of Colour…” which was reported to the British Association in 1861, and his Kalotrope was described in popular science literature like Pepper’s Boy’s Playbook of Science, and the Illustrated London News.

He was treated with polite skepticism by established optical scientists but his machines were crowd-pleasers at the Polytechnic shows.

---

Figure 1, shows four quadrants the perforations for four distinct disks of apertures.

📽️ Figure 2, a device disk, consisting of twelve equidistant balls
📽️ A, the balls will be presented as twenty-four ovals
📽️ B, as 48 involved figures
📽️ C, as an elaborate lacework
📽️ D, as a rich variation of form and colour

---

The Kalotrope of Thomas Rose explained, from pages 314 and 315, figure of Boys Playbook of Science published by George Routledge and Sons, London, in 1866.

---

As John Henry Pepper explains on p314 in his Boys Playbook of Science published by George Routledge and Sons, London, in 1866 “each ball apparently moves;”

---

The Kalotrope was produced at the Royal Polytechnic Institution. In 1860 Rose suggests a 3D moving picture using the Phenakistoscope and using 100 cameras taking Stereoscopic Pictures.

Here is the Illustrated London News report on the Thomas Rose Photodrome;

---

Both he and Muybridge were independently obsessed with analyzing human and animal movement: Muybridge: sequential photography → projection via the Zoopraxiscope.

Eakins: anatomical precision → painting used as a scientific / artistic tool. Eakins and his students were already experimenting with sequential photography around this time. This made collaboration almost inevitable once Muybridge arrived.

---

There is no solid primary evidence that clearly documents the exact moment or circumstances of how Eakins and Muybridge first met. Eakins himself conducted parallel motion studies using multiple cameras (more analytically rigorous than Muybridge’s setup). Eakins will soon paint figures onto glass disks for Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope.

As a corollary to his interest in anatomy, Thomas Eakins was fascinated with locomotion, human and animal figures in motion. A commission in 1879 to paint a four-in-hand coach (below) in Philadelphia led him to an intensive study of horse anatomy. Enter Eadweard Muybridge.

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

Their collaboration didn’t last long. Eakins moved toward true sequential photography or, proto cinematic logic, and Muybridge remained committed to motion reconstruction on disks. Eakins modified a Marey wheel-camera to make Chronophotographs of men running and playing leap-frog over each other.

---

---

---

Eakins experimented in the photographing of moving athletes and animals. Eakins was curious about what physiology could teach him about the body in action.

He built an observation hut (depicted in the animation) near Muybridge’s outdoor studio at the University of Pennsylvania in 1884, and placed it around the edge of a Zoopraxiscope disk along with horses and riders.

---

---

In 1885, he separated himself from the Muybridge project and left the university to work on his own. During the remainder of his lifetime, after the split from Eadweard Muybridge, his trajectory was uneven, controversial, and often professionally damaging.

Eakins continued his motion photography experiments, actually pushing further than Muybridge in analytical rigor. But this work did not translate into public acclaim or institutional reward.

He had some bumps in the road which I won’t go into.

What I will say is, he struggled financially relying mostly on portrait commissions, but remained respected in small circles, but not widely celebrated. After his death (1916) he was re-evaluated as one of the great American realists, seen as integrating photography, anatomy, and motion as a visionary.

His pre cinema–adjacent work gained new relevance in 20th century discourse.

---

So interested in the animal was Eakins, that leaving out the head of the rider and concentrating only on the horse, was no problem.

This original and un-cropped oil on canvas called Sketch for Cowboys in the Badlands from 1887 was auctioned in 2003 by Freeman’s in Philadelphia for $12, 000 US.

1866
WILLIAM BUTCHER & SONS (WILLIAM c. 1830S–1902)
They were a major British photographic‑apparatus dealer, camera brand, Magic‑Lantern and slide producer, and toy‑engineering manufacturer, active between 1866–1940, developing from a chemist’s shop into one of the most prolific suppliers of photographic and optical goods in Britain.

Based at Camera House in London, they were established in 1866 in Blackheath, London, this branch of the company became a powerhouse in the British camera industry.

---

---

Pictured are two Primus Magic Lanterns together with two boxes of slides.

_{Image cartersantiques}

They sold motion picture cameras and projectors under the ‘Empire’ brand, Toys & Kits under the ‘Primus’ trademark, and they also made engineering sets, wooden toys, and experimental chemistry outfits.

Early in their history, they didn’t manufacture everything themselves; they often imported high-quality German cameras and rebranded them for the British market.

---

In 1915, due to the loss of German imports during WWI, they formed a joint venture with their rival, Houghton’s Ltd. This eventually led to a full merger in 1926, forming the Houghton-Butcher Manufacturing Co., which later became famous for the Ensign camera brand.

The sons were Frank, Herbert and Charles Butcher who all had turns carrying on the business after William’s death.

---

_{Images Kino Cameras}

I have also found that the name W. Butcher can also refer to a separate, earlier company famous for high-quality woodworking tools.

---

---

TRIVIA
The Cottingley Fairies were a series of five photographs taken between 1917 and 1920 by two cousins — Elsie Wright aged 16 and Frances Griffiths aged 9 (pictured), in the village of Cottingley, West Yorkshire UK.

Their photographs became one of the most famous photographic hoaxes of the 20th century, largely because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle championed them as genuine evidence of supernatural beings.

The original camera used by the girls was a W. Butcher & Sons ‘Midg’ quarter‑plate (pictured) and is preserved at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford.

_{Image the Independent}

Midg quarter‑plate image the Independent. READ the story here.

The Camera Obscura had long been used in surveying and fortification design (e.g., military engineers in the 17th–18th centuries). In the mid-19th century, optical devices like telescopes and heliographs were standard.

---

Operators could track ships entering the field and by pressing a corresponding key linked to an electrical firing system, detonate the appropriate torpedo. The article emphasizes this as an innovative application of the Camera Obscura for real-time surveillance and coordinated defense.

---

Polanecky’s Glass Stereogram Salon quickly developed an audience. The viewers could see a 7-8 series of 3D photographs, which were changed every other day.

---

The Glass Stereogram Salon was a large device for multi-person viewing of stereoscopic photos. It was speculated that a “wooden rotating polygon,” moved by a clock mechanism, could “contain a Stereoscope.”

1866
WILLIAM PUMPHREY (1817-1905)
Little is known of William Pumphrey except he was a photographer beginning in 1849 in York UK while teaching science at Bootham School. He learned the art of light pictures from Samuel Walker, one of York’s first professional photographers.

Pumphrey later became superintendent of a private lunatic asylum in York. His photography was mostly for personal pleasure and he used the Magic Lantern to exhibit them at Bootham Park Hospital. It is documented Pumphrey used two revolving stereoscopes to show fifty of his stereoviews. Nothing else can be found.

---

His first photographs were taken using the Frederick Scott Archer 1851 Wet-Collodion process.

---

Muybridge would become, who some, will call the father of Motion Pictures. Below, only six of the multitude of plaques around the world commemorating Muybridge his rightful place in Motion Picture history.

---

This spelling was adopted because he believed it was the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) form of Edward. The spelling was likely inspired by the Kingston coronation stone in his hometown Kingston upon Thames, which had the Anglo-Saxon kings’ names spelled as Eadweard on its plinth, located near his childhood home. He used the name Eadweard Muybridge for the rest of his career, establishing the name we know for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion.

---

---

Lincoln created his Zoetrope when he was 18 years old, and a sophomore at Brown University. Lincoln’s patented had the viewing slits on a level above the pictures, allowing the use of easily replaceable strips. Pictured is Lincoln later in life.

---

The name Zoetrope is taken from the Greek zoion meaning “an animal,” and trope meaning “to turn.” In the United States Lincoln had his Zoetrope manufactured by the Milton Bradley Company of Massachusetts.

1866 MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY The Milton Bradley Zoetrope Pictures Series No. 1 introduced six double-sided strips. Initially patented in the UK 6 March 1867 and in the US on 23 April, 1867. The Milton Bradley game company advertised it on 15 December 1866.

---

---

People ask, how can I tell a Daedaleum of Horner on the left, from a Zoetrope of Lincoln on the right? There is a way. I gave you a tip at 1834, in the entry on Horner in chapter ten.

Look at the slits.

Horner’s drum slits are in-between the strip of images. Lincoln’s drum slits are above the strip of images.

1867
SOLAR CAMERA
LYMAN GOODALE BIGELOW (1841-1940)
Solar cameras were the standard mid 19th century enlarging apparatus that used sunlight, condensers and reflectors to project and enlarge glass plate negatives. They were widely experimented with between 1850 to 1870ish by Woodward, Wöthly, Claudet, and Monckhoven, so Bigelow’s entry sits in a well-trodden technical field of photographic enlargers of the period.

He patented the camera you see here, on 5 November 1867 (№ US70509).

---

Solar Camera image obtained from the Patent Models Index Guide to the Collections of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Think of it as the raster image vs. the vector image in our graphics world, with a solar image playing the part of the vector, having no issue with resolution: you can resize, rescale, and reshape vectors infinitely without losing any image quality.

---

Bigelow was a well-known early photographer who developed the Improvement in Photographic Backgrounds, № 115812, 13 June 1871, for studio photography which he sold years earlier to the Scoville Manufacturing Company.

Image courtesy of distant relative Rod Bigelow and the Bigelow Society.

He trained at the French Academy of Sciences and received multiple gold awards. He was a studio portrait specialist with locations in Detroit, Missouri, and Montana. He wrote the book Artistic Photography and How to Achieve It, and he raised his children in the studio environment.

As a result, his daughter Lou followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming a well-known photographer in Coronado, California.

---

This is the Improvement in Photographic Backgrounds, patent № 115812, granted 13 June 1871, for studio photography which a “back ground placed back of the sitter to give relief to the figure when taking a photographic portrait” according to the definition.

This schematic leaves something for the imagination.

It’s purpose was 3D relief as Bigelow states; “the background may be revolved so as to bring the dark side against or opposite the light or unshaded side of the sitter’s face, thus giving strong and bold relief to the figure of the photograph, which could not be obtained if, as is usually the case, the background were the same shade through out its whole surface.”

---

These Solar Camera and Revolving Background patents place Bigelow among the many inventors who contributed to refining the equipment that made the commercial photographic industry thrive in the post-Civil War era.

This patent seen here was for an improved design of a Solar Camera, a device that was critical to the photographic industry in the mid-19th century. The issuance of this patent reflects the continuous progress of photographic technology in the 1860s, driven by the demand for larger, high-quality images.

The opening statement of his patent he hopes will read “Procédé d’enregistrement et de reproduction des couleurs, des formes et des mouvements” (Process of recording and reproducing colors, shapes and movements).

---

Pictured is Charles Cros’ pli cacheté or sealed packet, deposited at the French Academy of Sciences on 30 April. In his message, Cros exhibited that the principles that would lead to the tangible realisation of moving colour photography had been discovered by him two years prior.

---

Charles Cros had prophesied of colour cinema, imagining “scenes in motion” which he thought could be at least sixteen minutes in length, and, at a frame rate of ten images of some kind per second.

Cros was envisioning “Theatrical scenes, fairy tableaux, ballets, street scenes, battle episodes, storms, hunts, official ceremonies, races, regatta,” and more (the 1867 letter).

---

---

Even his poetry takes first place honours on his tombstone. For all his achievements, Charles received the axiomatic stamp and coin, but not a crater on the moon, and no gold watch.

1867
INSTANTANEOUS PHOTOGRAPHY
ALFRED A. POLLOCK
In December Pollock proposed the capturing of a series of fifty sequential images on a disk, of a man walking. He would then place the positive photographs around the edge of the circular spinning plate.

---

INSTANTANEOUS PHOTOGRAPHS
Pollock felt that once negatives became sufficiently sensitive, things that moved in the street like wagons or people walking, could be viewed in the same way using the same technique.

---

---

On page 434 of The History of Photography – From the Camera Obscura to The Beginning of The Modern Era by Gersheim we read;

---

The suggestion made by Pollock in 1867 that he could take a series of fifty instantaneous photographs on a circular rotating plate was based on the idea that when a sensitive enough film is developed, pictures of such subjects as a man walking, could be chronicled.

---

---

---

Blanchard used a customised emulsion and developer, a tiny format stereo camera outfitted with a pair of wide-aperture short-focal-length-lenses, to make his Instantaneous Views.

He even took pictures of boats on the Thames.

^{Image Royal Photographic Society}

---

---

---

He is listed as active as a “photographer, printer” by the Science Museum Group record, with dates 1837-1903. Hopwood lists an entry in Living Pictures as “Edwards, E. No. 849. 23 March, 1867” and gives only that one line, referring to a patent № 849 which describes “Successive small pictures taken instantaneously on same plate.”

The idea here is to divide a plate or use a mechanism so that a succession of tiny images is exposed in different positions on the same photographic support. That makes it possible to capture successive instants of an event without changing full plates for every exposure.

Hopwood places this under “vague Chronophotography” because it’s an idea rather than a mature, reliably working system in the historical record.

---

Prismatic or slotted drum / slotted roller — the sensitive surface or the lens is moved / rotated so different portions are exposed in turn (Ducos du Hauron’s 1864 № 61976, March 1864 patent sketches this kind of slotted-roller / many-lenses idea).

Hopwood compares Edwards’ idea to the kind of schemes Louis Ducos du Hauron described in a French patent (patent no.) for making many separate exposures in series and then reproducing them — Ducos du Hauron’s filing is often invoked as a visionary but incompletely realized plan for photographic motion-recording.

Sliding frame or plate-changer — small plates or sensitive surfaces advance in a frame at intervals so each gets an exposure and then moves away.

1867
THE PHOTOBIOSCOPE
HENRY COOK and GAETANO BONELLI (1815-1867)
During the 1860s inventions like Stereoscope-Phenakistiscopes appeared such as the one invented by associates Cook and Bonelli. They called theirs the Photobioscope showing here both a front and back view.

---

The Cook-Bonelli Photobioscope advantage was animating sequences of successive photographs, and was more luminous because they were placed on a glass disc (Mannoni,1994, p232).

In 1850 Langenheim invents a process making positive images on disks called the Hyalotype.

---

---

Excerpt below from The History of Movie Photography, Brian Coe, New York Zoetrope Inc., Westfield New Jersey, 1981 talking about an unusual feature, on page 41.

---

---

The photographic images, arranged in two concentric rings on the disc, show a bust of a man photographed successively from about twenty-four different angles, forming a complete turn. When turned, the torso gives the impression of spinning.

---

---

A small handle put the black disc in motion (back side pictured). A glass plate held a series of images and was rotated by the metallic disc. Two circular openings (fixed) and two vertical slits (moving with the black disc) allow the viewer to see the images in motion.

1867
THE HALLETT ZOETROPE
HENRY WATSON HALLETT (1839-1899)
Barnstable County tax rolls in Springfield Massachusetts list Hallett as a jeweler merchant and silversmith by trade, in business with one Lewis. H. Taylor.

---

Hallett was granted a British patent Nº 629 on 6 March for “An Improved Mode of and Means for Producing Optical Illusions.”

Shown here is Hallett’s Zoetrope schematic from his patent in 1867 showing its adjustable stand that facilitated viewing and illumination of the drum.

^{Image Deac Rossell}

---

HALLETT VS LINCOLN
A comparison of patent schematics. Hallett’s from the Birmingham Daily Post, 16 January 1868, page 8 seen on the left, and the Lincoln version  from  the Berrows Worcester Journal,  two days later on 18 January 1868, page 5 on the right.

^{Image Deac Rossell}

---

Fellow historians on pre cinema will note that Lincoln’s Zoetrope patent filed 27 July 1866 was finally grant-dated 23 April 1867 out-beating Hallett by a few months. That’s because application dates supersede grant dates.

---

On 9 March, 1867 the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company acquired the rights to Hallett’s invention and became the official UK importers of the Milton Bradley US-made Hallett Zoetrope.

---

In a darkened lecture hall, you could see a projected image of the beating heart of a frog. This was perhaps his most celebrated demonstration, projected using a modified Magic Lantern and a concave mirror for lighting. This was a real-time, enlarged optical display.

He used glass stages, reflected light, and physiological preparations to make these inner workings visible to the naked eye of an audience—essentially ‘live cinema of the body,’ decades before actual film.

---

Czermak’s methods helped establish the didactic and demonstrative use of projected images in science, particularly physiology. These projected moving bodies (beating hearts, pulsing arteries, muscle contractions) inspired other scientists and educators to capture motion systematically, which becomes part of the genealogy of Chronophotography and early scientific cinema.

Some later figures, like Etienne-Jules Marey, did film frog hearts and muscle movements using cinematographic techniques, and they were likely aware of Czermak’s legacy.

---

---

A frog’s heart, still contracting, was mounted on a small tripod. Small bits of cork were put between the two heart chambers, joined using angled steel rods. Each stick ended with a bright mirror plate that moved forward / backward when the appropriate heart chamber contracted.

---

Right – A laterna magica was used to guide a ray of light onto both mirror panels. The plates reflected the light onto a screen. In the darkened lecture hall, the audience could see an enlarged image of heart action.

Left – Czermak disk based on Purkyně’s Phorolyt.

---

Even before the establishment of the first large-scale physiology institutes in the late 1860s, physiologists such as Czermak and Purkyně used Phenakistoscopes, mirrors, Magic Lanterns, and other optical media to project a novel image of moving life on a screen in front of an academic audience.

---

Czermak’s Spectatorium pictured here, was a private neuro and sensory-physiological institute built by Czermak, in Leipzig, Germany, between 1870 and 1872.

Constructed on his property in Querstraße, the single-story, basement-equipped building was modelled after the Royal School of Mines in London.

It featured a large lecture hall with 409 seats and approximately 100 standing places, arranged in a semicircular, steeply tiered amphitheater style around a central podium, optimized for scientific and popular physiological demonstrations.

---

THE HEART PREPARED FOR PROJECTION
From Dr. Branko Furst’s book Models of the Heart, The Heart and Circulation, we read how Czermak would have prepared the heart for the Spectatorium opaque projection.

---

Two limelight projectors were installed in the optical room located behind the last row of seats. For projection were: polished sections of bones, a dog’s knee, a cross section of human skin tissue, and the still-contracting frog heart that had served as the opening ceremony’s climax.

---

The Physiological Spectatorium, a lecture hall for scientific and popular science presentations by the Austrian physiologist Johann Nepomuk Czermak. Built in 1870 based on the model of the Royal School of Mines in London, ground floor and upper floor plan.

^{Image The Association of Leipzig Architects and Engineers: Leipzig and its buildings, Leipzig, 1892, pp182-184}

---

---

---

---

---

In 1888 Hyatt coins the phrase Celluloid from the chemical term Cellulose. He founded the Celluloid Manufacturing Company in Newark, New Jersey.

He is successful in producing optically clear Celluloid sheets of just . . . . 0.01″ thick.

---

One of the first uses of the new plastics material was for making denture plates. Hyatt formed the Albany Dental Plate Company in 1870.

He was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame https://plasticshof.org/members/john-wesley-hyatt/ in 1974.

---

An original Celluloid billiard ball made by Hyatt, from the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. The plaque reads: “Made in 1868 of Cellulose Nitrate, Celluloid. The Year John Wesley Hyatt Discovered This First Plastics Resin.”

Each featured distinct benefits for a range of slides and effects, including two built-in ‘special effects’ colour filters (blue and red) and a dissolving mechanism. They also included thicker wicks than the standard size.

---

_{Pages 40 and 41 from Marcy’s Sciopticon Manual, 1872 SEE it here.}

---

Marcy filed patents and was granted them respectively on 28 April 1868 for № 77300 and 6 July 1869, for № 92330. Each had two thicker-than-normal wicks for greater illumination. They were also designed to prevent the overheating of the case or shell.

These lanterns would become known as ‘Americans.’

We know that the lens was French because they were stamped with Darlot Lens, B.F. & Co. Paris. Marcy built his projectors in Philadelphia.

_{Image Museums Victoria | Photographer Rodney Start}

---

---

The name Sciopticon comes from the Greek words skia meaning shadow and opsis meaning to view a picture. A Sciopticon Magic Lantern has a distinctive tubular barrel-shaped body. In pronunciation, the ‘c’ is considered silent. SI-OP-TI-CON

The base of the projector is wood upon which sits the metal casing for the glass lens. There are three holes in each side of the wooden base for ventilation. The circular lens at the front of the object is encased in brass and the main body is also tubular.

At the rear of the projector there is a circular opening which allows access to the illuminant chamber.

_{Two left images de Luikerwaal, right image Hard to Find Props}

---

“Be it known that I L. J. MARCY, of Newport, in the county of Newport, and State of Rhode Island, have invented a new and improved Magic Lantern.”

---

1868
A MINIATURE PEPPER’S GHOST
JOSEPH MAURICE
In Deac Rossell’s Chronology of The Birth of Cinema 1833-1896, John Libbey Publishing, UK, 2022 we read that this Joseph Maurice left behind his specification for “Improvements in the Means or Method of Producing Optical Illusions” in the UK Patent Office.

As Rossell states in Part One, Joseph Maurice “leaves his specification at the UK Patent Office” after having;

---

Rossell concludes that “Maurice’s text implies he has been using this stage effect for some time; it seems to be a miniature version of Pepper’s Ghost, but also implies the (reflected) projection of stroboscopic imagery.” The provisional patent was dated 27 March 1868.

---

---

Maddox is renowned for discovering lightweight gelatin negative plates allowing photographers to use commercially available dry plates rather than having to make their own emulsions in a mobile darkroom.

---

Maddox suggested silver bromide could be suspended in an emulsion of gelatin which led to manufactured dry plates. Now, cameras could be made small enough to be held in one hand. This event heralded the start of the contemporary photographic era.

---

---

---

Testing a number of plates, and exposing them by contact-printing from other negatives, Maddox was documented as saying;

---

---

cameras could now be made small enough to be held in one hand

---

In the 1860s Richard Leach Maddox became interested in photography’s application to medical science. These are two Photomicrograph drawings of microscopic water-borne life forms, by Dr. Maddox for E. A. Parkes in his published work A Manual of Practical Hygiene, 1866.

---

---

---

---

In keeping with Edison’s electrocution of an elephant, horses, cattle, dogs and cats to prove the dangers of alternating current in 1903, (against its proponents Westinghouse and Tesla), a mule was used to demonstrate Instantaneous Photography and that it was not dangerous at all, except for the mule.

In a moment of time, the exposure caught the animal still standing after losing it’s head, and before it collapsed.

I contacted Scientific American 2 October 2025 and their archival people were not able to locate the original negatives taken by Bennett and overseen by General Abbot. I thank them for trying.

---

1868
THE KINEOGRAPH
JOHN BARNES LINNETT (b. 1831)
Linnett develops what is known as the Kineograph. It resembled a little book and when the pages were flipped, successive pictures gave the appearance of motion.

He called it an “optical illusion.” The simplest of optical toys.

Linnett was a British lithograph printer based in Birmingham, England. While French inventor Pierre-Hubert Desvignes is often credited with creating the Flip Book, Linnett’s patent predates this attribution. Born in Austrey, Warwickshire, he died of pneumonia at which time his wife later sold the Kineograph patent to an American.

---

The Flip Book, a simple yet captivating animation device, has a history rooted in the 19th century, evolving from early experiments in motion perception to a popular novelty item.

His 1868 patent described a book-like device with sequential images that, when flipped, created the illusion of movement. Linnett’s invention predates other claims, though it was not widely commercialized during his lifetime.

The Kineograph patent went on to describe it as;

---

---

watch a movie and learn how to dance all while having a smoke

---

A Flip Book is a little book with a series of pictures on each page that are in sequence from one page to the next, so that when the pages are flipped with some speed, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion.

The world’s smallest hand-held movie. By the 1880s, flip books began appearing as novelty items in Europe and the United States, often sold as toys or promotional items.

---

---

Flip Books remained a staple of children’s toys and novelty items through the 20th century. They were used in advertising (e.g., by companies like Coca-Cola), as educational tools, and even in early film studies to demonstrate animation principles.

---

A Flip Book typically consists of a small, bound stack of pages, each with a slightly altered image. When flipped rapidly, the images blend into a continuous motion due to Apparent Motion. They’re distinct from other optical devices because they’re portable, require no mechanical parts, and are user-controlled.

---

In 1897, the English filmmaker Henry William Short marketed his Filoscope, which was a Flip Book placed in a metal holder small enough to be held in the hand, to advance the pictures using the thumb like the Linnett paper version.

---

FAST FORWARD TO 1914
FLIP BOOK MARKETING
At this point in time we are well into the post cinema era, the silent era. And yet we continue to see this marvellous little pre cinema toy, even in the advertising world.

The Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company in just one example, produced the Fatima cigarette and added a Fatima moving picture dance book: the Maxine Flip Book to each package.

The Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company released 10 Flip Books under the theme of dancing, like the One Step. A Flip Book dance was included in each cigarette package. Watch a movie and learn how to dance all while having a smoke.

---

Mrs. Linnett sold the Kineograph patent after her husband died of pneumonia. This reminds me, I need coffee.

1868-1880
EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY
ALEXANDRA ‘XIE’ RHODA KITCHIN
Did you know that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a. Lewis Carroll the author of Alice in Wonderland was a prolific photographer? He was infatuated with the new art and often used people he knew as his models. He adored children. If you know about his relationship with Alice Liddell, you understand.

This lass pictured here was as well-known to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, as Alice Liddell was. Pronounced X-eee, she had her photograph taken by Dodgson about 50 times between the ages of 4 to 16.

---

---

One of these portraits was later turned into a painting by Alice Emily Donkin which hung for years over the mantle in Dodgson’s Oxford rooms.

---

This is the painting on the left.

Donkin was inspired to paint Waiting to Skate after seeing Lewis Carroll’s photograph of Alexandra Kitchin dressed as a woman even though she painted her as a child from a photograph. Signed and dated lower left corner.

Compare Donkin’s painting of an unidentified girl waiting to skate, with Alexandra.

---

This charming Albumen photograph on the left (top left if you are on a phone) of Alexandra Kitchin in Chinese garb, was auctioned by Bonhams for £24,000 ($34K US) in June 2010.

---

---

Xie had three younger brothers: George Herbert pictured here on the left, Hugh Bridges, and Brook Taylor, and a younger sister, Dorothy Maud Mary shown here on the right.

All were featured in Dodgson’s photographs.

---

As an adult, Alexandra Kitchin married Arthur Cardew but always remembered her friend with regular correspondence until his death in 1898. Alexandra was named after her Godmother Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, later queen consort to Edward VII.

1868
F. W. HARTLEY
In Living Pictures published in 1897, contemporary-to-the-pioneers Henry Vaux Hopwood, references a suggestion by F. W. Hartley dated 7 January, 1868, proposing the use of the Phenakistiscope to display an animated series of images instead of traditional lantern slides.

However, Hopwood notes that no specific apparatus was described in Hartley’s suggestion.

The Phenakistiscope, invented in 1832 simultaneously by Simon von Stamfper and Joseph Plateau, was an early motion device to create the illusion through a series of images viewed in rapid succession around the perimetre of a spinning disk.

---

Hartley’s suggestion to use the Phenakistiscope for animated sequences in lantern projections aligns with an interest in enhancing the visual experience of lantern shows by incorporating motion

---

By the late 1860s, the device had been adapted for projection purposes, and in 1843, T. W. Naylor proposed a plan for a Phenakistiscope projector using transparent disks, suggesting the tracing of images onto glass as Muybridge and Faber had done.

---

Pictured is Hartley’s No. 46 disk from 7 January 1868, of a man climbing up a ladder, seen from a view looking down. It was made by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company and is held at the Hagley Museum. Visit the @hagleymuseum on X.

However, the lack of a detailed apparatus description in Hartley’s suggestion leaves several questions unanswered. It’s unclear whether he envisioned a new appliance or proposed modifications to existing paraphernalia.

---

LITTLE EVIDENCE
The absence of specifics makes it challenging to ascertain the practical application of his idea. However, because Hopwood felt it important to publish, so do I. This disk you see of men climbing up a ladder, has not been associated with Hartley by name each time I’ve seen it.

However, it pops up every time I have searched for the name Hartley. La Cinémathèque française calls this a Zootrope disc or Wheel of Life but does not attribute it to Hartley or Thomas Ross. In fact, they attribute it to no one. The words around the edge state “copied from original origin by permission of London Stereoscopic Company.”

1869
ADDITIVE AND SUBTRACTIVE COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
Louis Arthur Ducos Du Hauron publishes Les Couleurs en Photographie describing his three colour principle of colour photography. Below: a print from three distinct Photograms (1870) on the right and a Heliochrome of Agen, France (1878).

---

Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Nikolayevich Graf Tolstoi) [1828-1910] frequently makes mention of the Magic Lantern in his works. For example, in War and Peace written between 1865 and 1869, in Chapter XXIV Tolstoy writes;

---

---

---

---

“this mechanism which rises in the air and turns on itself paves the way for future flying aeronautical models which will appear later”

---

---

In his lectures at the Collège de France, where he taught from 1867 on, Marey presented drawings to illustrate his theories, and the trajectory of the wings.

Below, an 1874 engraving depicting an artificial insect and, his insect flight instrument illustrating the flight of insects.

---

In 2000 Marey’s now-lost little insect-flying machine was re-constructed from the 1874 engraving depicting an artificial insect and, his insect flight instrument illustrating the flight of insects.

---

Here’s an 1869 watercolour by Edmond Eugène Valton on the left, of Marey’s insect flight instrument. On the right is the recreated working version made in 2000 for the Espace Electra exhibition which ran for three months.

---

---

“The small model that I submit to the Academy develops a traction force that can be measured with a dynamometre and which represents the lifting of a weight of 8 to 10 grams.”

^{– Étienne-Jules Marey to the Academy of Science, 1869}

---

“This mechanism which rises in the air and turns on itself paves the way for future flying aeronautical models which will appear later.”

^{– E. J. Marey, ‘Natural history of organized bodies . . . .,’ 20 March 1869, p253.}

---

---

Marey’s common house fly in flight, 1890.

---

But he had a sharp enough technical imagination to propose workable concepts. Cros presented a plan for producing natural-colour photographs using: three separate negatives through red/green/violet filters, and recombining them by projection or printing. It was a correct trichromatic principle, roughly contemporary with Louis Ducos du Hauron.

Cros never realised it technically; Ducos du Hauron did.

---

Louis Ducos du Hauron provided other well-known ideas around the same period that were similar to Cros’ theories, which predicted the subtractive method used in modern photography.

Cros and du Hauron are documented as having presented their method of generating colour images, to the French Society of Photography on the very same day, 7 May, 1869.

Neither had been in contact with the other prior, and no documentation can be found that shows either was aware of the other’s work. And even though Cros presented his report to the French Academy of Sciences on 2 December, 1867, he eventually ceded primacy to du Hauron on the matter.

A missed opportunity for fame.

---

---

---

1877
THE FIRST GRAMOPHONE
Charles Cros also invented the Paleophone (voix du passé), the name he gave to the first Gramophone. The Paleophone is shown here in two versions in both photograph and illustration. The final cylindrical form is on the right.

---

On 30 April 1877, three months before Thomas Edison’s Phonograph, Cros submitted a sealed envelope seen here on the left, containing a letter to the Academy of Sciences in Paris explaining his proposed method.

In part, the translated letter stated;

---

---

---

Cros was thrilled with the possibility of life in outer space as was Christiaan Huygens.

His opusculum entitled A Study of the Means of Communicating With Other Planets, was published in 1869. Cros sent copies of this little pamphlet to the newspapers and journals of the time and, to the Academy of Sciences.

He was certain that the faint streaks of light that were seen shooting up above the planets of Venus and Mars when seen through a telescope, were certainly the lights of enormous cities on these planets.

He supposed an idea to communicate with them, that may have been used in the past, for military purposes.

Cros spent years attempting to persuade the government to fund an Archimedes-type big mirror, that would burn words into the ground of these planets, to communicate with the Venusians of Venus and Martians of Mars.

Not his finest moment.

1869
DAVID TREVOR
David Trevor, of Birmingham, in the county of Warwick produced a device for creating a “Radial series of pictures taken on a revolving sensitised disc.” This required an early form of Instantaneous Photography for capturing a sequence of movement, where multiple small images were arranged and exposed in a circle on a single, rotating photographic plate (the sensitised disc).

This type of design was one of many precursors to modern cinematography, attempting to use the principles of rapid-sequence photography to produce the illusion of motion, which was usually viewed later in a separate apparatus.

---

Based on available historical records, David Trevor did not give his device a distinct, commercial name. It was patented 20 July 1869 as we read in the London Gazette clipping dated ten days later: Patent № 2193 to, David Trevor, photographer, for the invention of “new or improved apparatus for facilitating the production of photographic pictures, as also in the mounts or cases and fittings for the same.”

This concept aligns with early experiments in motion photography and optical devices aimed at simulating movement, such as the Zoetrope or Praxinoscope. Unfortunately, without additional information or access to specific patent databases, it’s challenging to provide more details about the inventor Trevor, or the exact nature of this device.

What we do have indicates it was an early attempt at capturing and displaying motion through a rotating disc apparatus.

The Pedemascope was a card-based device with images that, when twirled in a mahogany holder, created a visual effect similar to a Thaumatrope, sometimes used with a Magic Lantern for projection.

As a clergyman (likely Anglican, given the “Rev.” title and 19^th century English context), there’s limited biographical detail available beyond this invention—no specific records of his birth, death, or pastoral career in my sources.

---

Unlike the Thaumatrope, which used strings or a stick to spin the card, the Pedemascope’s mahogany holder and semi-rotation mechanism made it a more sophisticated and durable device, possibly aimed at a middle-class or educational market.

Transparent or cut-out variations were suggested for use with the Magic Lantern. Here, we see the Pedemascope from The Popular Educator: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Elementary, Advanced and Technical Education, Cassell, London, 1888, p169;

---

The Pedemascope was part of a 19^th century fascination with optical toys, which were both entertainment and educational tools. Its compatibility with Magic Lanterns, widely used in educational lectures and parlor entertainment, suggests it was marketed for both home use and public demonstrations, possibly in schools, churches, or scientific societies.

_{Pedemascope images from The Popular Educator- A Complete Encyclopaedia of Elementary, Advanced and Technical Education, Cassell, London, 1888, figures 3, 4, 5, p169}

---

Given Pilkington’s clerical status, he may have intended the Pedemascope for educational or moral instruction, as optical toys were often used in Victorian Sunday schools or lectures to illustrate scientific principles or biblical stories.

The Pedemascopes concept of alternating images was echoed in later patents, such as Thomas E. Bickle’s 1892 clockwork Thaumatrope, which used mechanical means to show motion in two phases. This suggests Pilkington’s design may have inspired minor innovations.

From The Popular Educator p169; “The stencil or transparent figures may be used in the magic lantern, and are so constructed as to change their position apparently on being reversed, and by a semi-rotation only apparent movements are obtained.”

---

The lack of surviving examples or widespread references suggests it was not commercially successful or widely adopted. No records indicate how many Pedemascopes were produced, who purchased them, or how they were marketed. It’s unclear whether Pilkington actively promoted the device or if it was a one-off project.

READ about the Richard Pilkington Pedemascope here at Internet Archive.

_{The Popular Educator- A Complete Encyclopaedia of Elementary, Advanced and Technical Education, Cassell, London, 1888, p169}

1869
WHEEL OF LIFE MAGIC LANTERN SLIDE
THOMAS ROSS
The Ross Wheel of Life was a Mechanical Magic Lantern slide for animation and projection. Made of Brass, copper, glass, zinc alloy, wood.

The glass disk was 3.1 inches in diametre and it had a single slot shutter.

---

Operation of the Ross Wheel of Life was by spring belt and pulley, driven from a single handle. Projection was through a Magic Lantern and the handle turned a transparent 13-picture disk. A counter-rotating shutter disk with the 13 slots gave an illusion of movement on a screen.

^{Image the Kodak Collection at the National Media Museum}

---

---

Two painted Thomas Ross Wheel of Life lantern slide disks also showing two versions- multiple or single slot shutter.

Glass, mica, and celluloid discs. Patented in 1869, from Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue.

---

The Thomas Ross Mechanical Magic Lantern Wheel of Life was a projection version of the Phenakistoscope by Joseph Plateau, and was patented by Ross twice, in 1869 and 1871.

---

---

Left – Thomas Ross Flying Geese Wheel of Life, made of Mica 1890. Image Tangible Media Collection.

Right – The Ross Wheel of Life, Geese taking flight, 1890 with a brass centre. Animation Tangible Media Collection.

---

SEE a Thomas Ross Wheel of Life Magic Lantern Slide from 1871 come to life thanks to Museu del Cinema. Watch as a slide carrier is removed from and lantern and the Wheel of Life is loaded. Runs 1:43

---

TOP
CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Welcome	About	Introduction	Chapter One beginning of time – 999 AD
Chapter Two 1000 AD – 1399	Chapter Three 1400 – 1599	Chapter Four 1600 – 1649	Chapter Five 1650 – 1699
Chapter Six 1700 – 1749	Chapter Seven 1750 – 1799	Chapter Eight 1800 – 1819	Chapter Nine 1820 – 1829
Chapter Ten 1830 – 1839	Chapter Eleven 1840 – 1849	Chapter Twelve 1850 – 1859	Chapter Thirteen 1860 – 1869
Chapter Fourteen 1870 – 1879	Chapter Fifteen 1880 – 1884	Chapter Sixteen 1885 – 1889	Chapter Seventeen 1890 – 1894
Chapter Eighteen 1895 – 1896	Chapter Nineteen 1897 – 1899	Chapter Twenty 1900 + post cinema	Chapter Twenty-One Addendum 1911+
Copyright	HOTDOC Internet Archive Channel	HOTDOC X Channel	HOTDOC You Tube Channel

Energized by planetelcommunications

© 1990 – 2026

About

Email