William Horner

The next pioneer that I am going to talk about is the British mathematician, William Horner, the creator of the modern zoetrope. Although the zoetrope had already been created by Ting Huan in 180 AD, which was almost two millennia earlier, the original design differed from the modern one created by Horner. The original zoetrope utilised a lamp, and the heat generated from it to turn the device by having the hot air generated from the lamp turn vanes on top of the device. Painted panels on the edge of the rotating device would create the illusion of movement in the same way that the phenakistoscope does when it spins. The modern zoetrope created by Horner was different in a few ways. The most obvious difference is that instead of using the method of having a lamp rotate the panels, the device could just be spun around by hand. The modern zoetrope was influenced by Plateau’s phenakistoscope, which shows how animation evolved.

The zoetrope was a significant improvement over its predecessors. It is superior to the ancient zoetrope, since having to use a lantern to activate it makes it highly impractical, and would also kill its appeal to the general public.

It is also a great improvement over the phenakistoscope for two reasons. One is that it removes the need for a mirror, which makes it more practical to use. The other is that since it uses viewing slots (the ones on the side of it on the picture) instead of having the user stand in front of it to look into the mirror, it allowed for multiple users to view it properly.

The modern zoetrope is only a step towards the creation of modern stop motion animation, however it is still in use even today, so I would definitely consider William Horner one of the pioneers of stop motion animation, since even though he didn’t invent the device, he modernised it and brought public interest to it again. The reason I say this for Horner, but not for Plateau is because although Horner’s device was influenced by Plateau’s work, it resembles the ancient zoetrope far more, and it was the zoetrope and not the phenakistoscope which influenced the later revolutions in animation.