Zoetrope

Manufacturer	Agàpit Borràs
Name	Zoòtrop
Place	Mataró (Catalonia)
Date	after 1897
Register	00981

The zoetrope, initially called "daedaleum", was a device that created the illusion of the animation of an image thanks to the persistence of human vision. It was invented by William George Horner in 1834, inspired by the phenakistoscope, but the zoetrope had the advantage that the moving image could be observed by several people at the same time. It consisted of a metal or cardboard cylinder, with several vertical grooves, which rotated horizontally on a shaft mounted on a solid base. Inside, interchangeable strips of paper were placed with drawings representing the various phases of an action. There were as many pictures as there were grooves on the cylinder. By spinning it at high speed and observing the drawings through the slots, the image became animated. Agàpit Borràs, manufacturer of games and toys from Mataró, introduced this device in Catalonia from 1897. Borràs marketed two different models, one with a diameter of seventeen centimetres and the other with a diameter of twenty-three centimetres. The first model had twenty-four strips with different images and the second, forty-eight strips.

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