Pre-20C Optical Toys and Illusionary Devices

January 10, 2005 11:05 AM

Pre-20C Optical Toys and Illusionary Devices- The Laura Hayes and John Howard Wileman Exhibit of Optical Toys, at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Includes animations and short videos of kinoras, thaumatropes, phenakistoscopes, zoetropes, and praxinoscopes.
posted by carter (5 comments total)

First link not safe for photosensitive epileptics. Seriously.
posted by worldswalker at 11:25 AM on January 10, 2005

Yes, that exhibit is approximately appropriate for the caliber of that school.
posted by esoterica at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2005

The Optical Toy Co. is pretty cool too.
posted by R. Mutt at 12:20 PM on January 10, 2005

Sorry, that Optical Toy Co. link above isn't working.
posted by R. Mutt at 12:23 PM on January 10, 2005

Growing up, if we were visiting my grandparents when the weather was bad the first thing I'd grab was a stereoscope and its cards that one of my great-grandparents had as a child. The images always seemed like mini-movies to me, since the 3d effect is so clear and so unexpected (hey, I was a kid, I had no idea how this sort of magic was done).

A quick search online led me this page, where I found several of the cards I've got, some from this set, one from the Civil War era (unfortunately I haven't pulled the cards out lately, so I'm sure there's a lot that I'm missing because I can't remember the captions well enough to search for them). When my grandmother packed up her house to move, the set of cards and the viewer were the one thing I that I insisted on taking, since she was going to toss it out.
posted by chickygrrl at 1:08 PM on January 10, 2005