The inventors of Animation: How animation became what we know it today

Joseph Plateau:

He was a Belgian physicist, who was the first person ever to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. He demonstrated that using spinning discs with images on them, spinning really fast they formed the illusion of a loop-action scene forming on the disks. He called these disks “Phenakistoscope”, also known as the "spindle viewer".

The way the disks functioned was by putting two disks, one on top of the other. The top one would have stripe-shape cut-out holes that would reveal a part of the image from the bottom disk. While spinning really fast the base image of the top disk merges with the bottom creating the illusion of a moving image. This is possible due to the persistence of vision of the human eye that makes the images appear to be moving in a flaws motion, when really its just one image quickly coming after the other. This idea had been proved by Greek Mathematicians in the past however Joseph Plateau then firmly established this idea creating a product like his discs that fascinated people.

William Horner:

He was a British mathematician/headmaster. He is well known as a mathematician who wrote mostly functional equations. He also contributed to the area of optics by developing the method of the “Zoetrope”, this is today known as Horner’s method. The Zoetrope was originally called the Devil's Wheel. Horner was inspired by Plateau's idea however he thought that he could create a different morse sophisticated version that would let the viewer see one image at a time flowing in a constant horizontal line. After inventing the Wheel of the Devil, him and his invention was forgotten for over 30 years, until William F. Lincoln patented and renamed in to the Zoetrope or the  wheel of life.

Charles Reynaud:

French inventor, who created the first animated cartoons. In 1877 he created the Praxinoscope and a theatre called “Teatre Optique” in December 1888. On the 28^th of October in Paris. The Praxinoscope was a tool which consisted of a vertical-standing rod for support, and a barrel-like plate, which included images on the inside, each a progression of the last. This barrel also had vertical, stripe-shaped holes between each image. So when the barrel was span fast, while looking through the whole you could see the images through the fast changing holes and that would create the illusion that you are looking at one image that is moving, since each is a progression of the last. 

We can see how Charles Raynaud took Horner's improved product of Plateau's original idea and developed it even further. He took the Zoetrope and added a midsection of mirrors, getting rid of the small slits, this now offered a better looking images which appeared to flow more smoothly than the original zoetrope, this was like Zoetrope 2.0.

Charles dies on the 29^th of March of 1917.

Eadweard Muybridge:

An English photographer who pioneered in the photography area, in the studies of motion. By nature he was a photographer, however migrated to America and became a bookseller. He soon returned to England and during 1861 took up professional photography once more. He learned the wet-plate collodion process and created 2 patents for his inventions.

He returned back to San Fransisco in 1867, where he did his world-wide famous photographs of the Yosemite valley.  He is really well known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion, where he used fast moving disks to display the movement of animas. This was called the zoopraxiscope. An interesting fact was that at the time people still hadn't proved that a horse had all four of its hooves off the ground in the middle of a gallop. Muybridge was able to prove that this was correct. 

Muybridge was was considered the pioneer of the 20th century's photography as he had one of the most famous landscape photos at the time, one of them a landscape of New York:

Thomas Edison:

One of the greatest inventors of all time. He contributed to a lot of the technologies we take for granted in the 21^st century. He was responsible for the existence of the current photograph and the motion-picture camera. He also developed the long lasting light bulb. He held 1093 patents under his name

Another area that Edison contributed in was telecommunication. He developed power utilities like the sound recorder and therefore contributed in the communication area. He recorded many motion pictures and music.

In only the period of 8 years Edison accuired over 400 patens for his inventions one of them being the light bulb. However his succes began to plummet after he attempted to create a device which would manipulate electricity in order to communicate with the dead.

In 1877 Edison invented the photograph, but in 1889 he decided he would create a talking doll, an idea which turned to be way ahead of it's time. He would create little motors which when spun would create a sound. He was expecting that the children would buy different records to put inside the doll, but this failed because the motors were too delecate and wore off only after a few times of playback.

Nevertheless Edison was still an incredible inventor pioneer and is someone that helped push technology to develop further as we know it today.

The Lumiere Brothers:

Auguste and Louis were two excellent technically-minded people. They began experimenting with photographic equipment that their father used to manufacture, leading to the discovery of a process which assisted the development of photography. They reinvented the way cameras would work and be used to provide higher quality video and easier operation. This was what they called consumer satisfactory.

They worked on this product for a while, but the Louis came up with the solution. They started selling their photographic plates producing a massive business as there was huge interest in their products. By 1894 they were producing for a demand of 15 million plates per year.

Louis developed a new 'dry plate' process in 1881 at the age of seventeen, it became known as the 'Etiquette Bleue' process and gave his father’s business a welcome boost, and a factory was built soon after to manufacture the plates in the Monplaisir quarter of the Lyons Suburbs.

Later on they patented the Cinematograph. Using it they were able to shoot what is considered the first ever true movie using motion picture, and therefore hugely contributed to the current state of the cinema. Over the course of their lifetime they created the structure of the basic camera equipment calling it cinematograph, from which arrived the name Cinema.