zoopraxiscope
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Laser projection creates galloping horse movie on the clouds
A bright green horse was projected across the sky over Nottingham late last month. It wasn't a Bat-Signal-style projection that was made from a searchlight on the ground. Instead, the silhouette of a rider on a horse was projected directly onto the clouds from a Cessna 172 aircraft that flew over the city in the UK. Artist Dave Lynch created the first of its kind mobile projection with a zoopraxiscope, a movie projector that made its debut back in 1879. He repurposed the historical device and swapped its original light source with a laser for precision and efficiency. The display wasn't clear from the ground, but viewed from the plane it looked like a horse galloping through the dark clouds.
Google doodle gets animated to honor zoopraxiscope creator
Long before there was Flash animation in the world, Eadweard Muybridge gave us the Zoopraxiscope, a simple stop-motion device considered by some to be the first-ever movie projector. Created in 1879, the player features spinning glass disks that give displayed images the illusion of movement. Muybridge, born this day in 1830, photographed a galloping horse to help settle the question of whether all four of the animal's hooves leave the ground at the same time while galloping (they do), later animating the image via his new invention. That movement can be set in motion with a click on today's Google doodle.
