7-band Praxinoscope, Circa 1920

The Praxinoscope. Diameter: 22.5 cm; height: 24 cm. Some pitting on the mirrors but the strips are clearly visible and in fairly good working order. This is a model with a musical mechanism dating from the 1920s-30s. It consists of 10 prismatic mirrors arranged in the center of a metal crown mounted on a turned wooden base, into which are slipped 7 strips with various lithographed decorations (71x6 cm): the seesaw, the ostrich race, the devil cooking a policeman on a stove, the cup and ball game, the acrobatic monkey with a hat, the wire man dance, and a simple black and white strip. "The praxinoscope, patented by Emile Reynaud on August 30, 1877, was presented at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1878. Madame Burée, responsible for writing the report on the trinkets section, gives a description of the new device: 'Based on a new combination of optics, the praxinoscope (praxis, action, scopeo, I look) produces, like the phenakistiscope or zoetrope and other known devices, the illusion of movement. But this illusion is produced in this new instrument by a new means, the results of which are more complete than those which had been obtained until now. [...] in the praxinoscope the substitution of successive poses is obtained with the help of flat mirrors or glasses, placed at an equal distance between the center of rotation of the device and the drawings arranged in a ring around them. In this way, the virtual images of the successive drawings, all made in the center of the device, are superimposed on each other, which produces the most complete and perfect illusion of movement.' (see website of the Cinémathèque française)