Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Phenakistoscope

 
Disc for a phenakistoscope created by Eadweard Muybridge.
 
Simulated mirror view of the above disc.
Reason
A little exercise in animated GIFs. The fixed image of the disc is from the Library of Congress, I just centered the image and tried to remove as much wobble as possible (accepting that this was probably not cut on a high precision machine), and rotated each copy by 360/13 degrees. The mirror simulation is just one variant, check the image page for the others. Proposed extended caption:

The phenakistoscope is one of the first devices to create moving images and a precursor of the zoopraxiscope and, in turn, cinematography. Conceived as a simple disc to be held vertically in front of a mirror and spun around its axis, the subjects appear to be in motion when viewed through the slits of the disc. This disc was created by Eadweard Muybridge in 1893 and differs from the standard format in that the slits are located towards the center of the disc, and not around the perimeter.

Note: The disc belongs to a phenakistoscope, and not to a zoopraxiscope as the description claims, and was probably part of a patent application filed for the zoopraxiscope in 1893, the year he presented his invention at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Articles this image appears in
Phenakistoscope
Creator
Eadweard Muybridge (animation by trialsanderrors)
Nominator
trialsanderrors

Promoted Image:Phenakistoscope 3g07690b.gif --KFP (talk | contribs) 11:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]