Zoetrope

In 1834 a British mathematician named William George Horner invented the modern Zoetrope, it failed to become popular until the 1960s, when makers in both England and America patented it. A Zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. It became a revolution in history, in terms of animation because it was one of first devices that created still image movement (animation).

The zoetrope works by pictures being drawn on a strip, which could be set around the bottom of a metal drum, with the slits cut in the upper section of the drum. The drum was mounted on a spindle so that it spins and viewers looking through the slits would see the cartoon strip form a moving image. The faster the drum is spun, the smoother the image that is produced.

Persistence of vision is a theory, which explains that the human eye always retains images for a fraction of a second (0.04seconds). Meaning that everything we see is a subtle blend of what is happening now but also what happened a fraction of a second ago.