phénakistiscope

A form of phenakistoscope — An early animation device consisting of a disc or drum which rotated, showing successive images through slits, often via a mirror, thus producing the illusion of motion.

Meanings

nounphénakistiscope (plural phénakistiscopes)

plural phénakistiscopes

  1. alternativeAlternative form of phenakistoscope.

    [Joseph] Plateau sent one of his phénakistiscopes as a present to Michael Faraday.

    1998, Keith J. Laidler, “Daguerre, Talbot, and the legacy of photography: […]”, in To Light Such a Candle: Chapters in the History of Science and Technology, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 101
    4 more examples

    In 1829 he [Joseph Plateau] constructed a circular device, the phénakistiscope, on which sixteen pictures were mounted (Figure 1.5).

    1969, Roy Paul Madsen, Animated Film: Concepts, Methods, Uses, New York, N.Y.: Interland Publishing Inc., →ISBN, page 7

    Motion picture prehistory is documented by hand-colored phénakistiscope (1832) and Fantascope (1833) discs, by zoetrope strips (c1867), and by woodcuts showing peep shows;

    1981, Lynda Corey Claassen, “National Museum of American History”, in Finders’ Guide to Prints and Drawings in the Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Institution, →ISBN, page 90

    Throughout the early twentieth century, [Félix] Regnault wrote about cinema and its history, a history he saw as an evolution originating from both science and popular entertainment, beginning with the concept of the persistence of the image on the retina, [Joseph] Plateau’s phénakistiscope, and [Émile] Reynaud’s praxinoscope, and reaching its apex with the invention of cinema by [Étienne-Jules] Marey, whom Regnault referred to as le père du du cinéma (Félix Regnault, “L’évolution du cinéma,” La revue scientifique [1922]: 7985).

    1996, Fatimah Tobing Rony, “Notes to Chapter Two”, in The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 231

    For example, in the French original of Machine animale, [Étienne-Jules] Marey writes that Mathias Marie Duval used a phénakistiscope;

    2004, Norman E. Tutorow, “The First Motion Picture”, in The Governor: The Life and Legacy of Leland Stanford, a California Colossus, Spokane, Wash.: The Arthur H. Clark Company, →ISBN, page 474
Cite this entry
APA

phénakistiscope. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ph%C3%A9nakistiscope

MLA

“phénakistiscope.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ph%C3%A9nakistiscope. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “phénakistiscope,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ph%C3%A9nakistiscope.

Source: phénakistiscope on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.