Joseph Plateau

Who was he?
Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau was a Belgian physicist born in the French Empire in 1801. He was sent to the Academy of Fine Arts as his father, who painted flowers, wanted Plateau to take after him. After his parents died, Plateau was in the care of his uncle where he spent most of his time in the countryside. He built demonstration apparatus, organised séances and astonished his audience with the originality of his experiments. 
After Plateau finished his studies at 'Atheneum' his uncle forced him to go to the University of Liège in the Arts and Philosophy Faculty.



Phenakistoscope
Joseph Plateau was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. In 1832, Plateau and his sons introduced the 'Phenakistoscope' which is a spindle viewer. It was also indepenendently invented by Simon Von Stampfer who called it the 'Stroboscope' in the same year.

The phenakistoscope uses the idea of persistence of vision to create an illusion of a motion. It uses two discs mounted on the same axis where the first disc has slots around the edge and the second has drawings of the action drawn around the disc in circles. Unlike Faraday's wheel which spun in opposite directions, the phenotistocope discs spin together in the same direction. When you view the disc slots through a mirror, the pictured on the second disc appear to move.

Influences

Joseph Plateau was influenced by Mark Faraday and Peter Mark Roget. Faraday had previously invented a device which he called "Michael Faraday's Wheel" that consisted of two discs that spun in opposite directions from each other. From Faraday's wheel, Plateau took it a step further by adapting Faraday's wheel into a toy he later named the phenakistoscope.

Present Day
The projection of stroboscopic photographs on the phenakistoscope which created the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema. Joseph Plateau has made a massive impact towards moving image. If he had not developed the phenatistoscope then we may not have developed film and animation the way we have today.