Specific date unknown: According to the 1864 narrative of the British mathematician Charles Babbage, the thaumatrope was invented by the Irish geologist William Henry Fitton. Babbage had told Fitton how the astronomer John Herschel had challenged him to show both sides of a shilling at once. Babbage held the coin in front of a mirror, but Herschel showed how both sides were visible when the coin was spun on the table. A few days later Fitton brought Babbage a new illustration of the principle, consisting of a round disc of card suspended between two pieces of sewingsilk. This disc had a parrot on one side and a cage at the other side. Babbage and Fitton made several different designs and amused some friends with them for a short while. They forgot about it until some months later they heard about the supposed invention of the thaumatrope by John Ayrton Paris.[1]
January 4: George Albert Smith, English filmmaker, inventor, magic lantern lecturer, stage hypnotist, and claimed psychic, (In 1894, Smith started staging magic lantern shows of a series of dissolving views. Smith's skilful manipulation of the lantern, cutting between lenses (from slide to slide) to show changes in time, perspective and location necessary for storytelling, allowed him to develop many of the skills he would later put to use as a pioneering filmmaker. He is credited with developing the grammar of film editing. He developed special effects by using his own patented process of double-exposure. Smith developed the Lee-Turner Process into the first successful color film process, Kinemacolor), (d. 1959).[2][3][4][5][6][7]
^Gray, Frank (2009), "The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899), G.A. Smith and the Rise of the Edited Film in England", in Grieveson, Lee; Kramer, Peter (eds.), The Silent Cinema Reader, Routledge (published 2004), ISBN978-0415252843
^Catalogue, Henri Rivière: The Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower (1888-1902), Watermarks Gallery, Pittsboro, NC, 1995.
^Phillip Dennis Cate and Mary Shaw (eds), The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant-Garde, 1875-1905, Rutgers University Press, 1996, pp.55-58 excerpted on line as Henri Riviere: Le Chat noir and 'Shadow Theatre'.
^Jouvanceau, Pierre (2004). The Silhouette Film. Pagine di Chiavari. trans. Kitson. Genoa: Le Mani. ISBN88-8012-299-1.
^Olivier Calon, Benjamin Rabier, Paris, Tallandier, 2004 ISBN2-84734-102-1
^"Lectures". Bulletin de l'Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles (in French). Vol. III, no. 1. Brussels: l'Académie Royale. 1836. pp. 9–10.
^"Stroboscopische Scheiben (optische Zauberscheiben)". Wiener Zeitung. 2 May 1833. p. 4.