Thaumatrope

What is a Thaumatrope?

Thaumatrope is a skill used in animation and was a toy that dates back to the 19th century. A thaumatrope is made up of a disc with two different drawings on each side and two pieces of string.

How Does it Work?

A thaumatrope works by the two pieces of strings being twirled causing the two separate images to appear as one.

There are advantages and disadvantages of this animation skill:

• The advantages are that its very cheap and easy to make 
• The disadvantage is that it requires fairly good artistic skills

The credit for the invention of Thaumatrope is given to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget and was first used in 1824 to demonstrate persistence of vision.

Two well known examples are shown below. One being the goldfish in the fish bowl (Left) and the other being the duck in the pond (Right)

Here is a video with many great examples.

 

Here is another video demonstrating how to make them.