Page 108 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 108/206
John Barnes Linnett: the Kineograph flip-book 1869
Linnett was a lithographic printer and he patented the idea of the flip-book as the Kineograph in 1868, although he may not have been the originator of the idea. After his death, his wife sold the patent to an American (perhaps it was Hermann Casler of Mutoscope fame?). Anyway, this simple mechanical device ended up intriguing youngsters (and adults) for at least a century! Many people ask why these toys have held their fascination for so long - even into the age of Movies, of Television and (almost) into the age of Videogames? The answer I think is the seemingly timeless fascination with the moving image, the idea of animating still images by a simple flicking procedure, - and this fascination with the illusion of movement - underpins many of the optical toys of the last 200 years or so. The Kineograph takes its place alongside the Thaumatrope, the Zootrope, Phenakistoscope, Stroboscope, and the Zoopraxiscope - and others! I saw the brilliant Eadweard Muybridge exhibition at Tate Britain in 2011, and was delighted by the themed thaumatropes, flip-books, lenticular cards and other optical paraphernalia that were on sale. It was the flip-book that Robert W. Paul reinvented as the Filoscope in 1900, and Hermann Casler and his colleagues commodified as the Mutoscope (1898).
Linnett patents and commodifies the flip-book, providing fascinating motion-picture media technology that's still around now. That our cognitive perceptual system (our eyes and brain) has been duped by simple mechanisms like this over the last two hundred years is the root of why Movies are an enduring and beloved aspect of our culture all over the world. Even the most scientifically satisfactory explanation of this sensory illusion of motion (Max Wertheimer's Phi Phenomenon (1912), and Hugo Munsterberg's theory of film 1916) still leave a lot to be desired (one feels that this issue could be as illusory as the idea of self-consciousness), but we are gradually - and fairly rapidly - discovering more about how the brain and central nervous system - and even consciousness itself - works...