Plateau, a Belgian scientist who became blind in work that resulted in making it possible for millions all over the world to see motion pictures, deserves more than anyone else the title, “Father of the Motion Picture.” Just as Athanasius Kircher originated projection as we know it with the magic lantern, Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau has the best claim of all to credit for making the motion picture illusion a reality.

Never interested in profits for himself, Plateau did not trouble to patent his magic disk picture machines but took pains to issue correct instructions when commercial imitators made devices lacking in some essential.

Plateau was born on Oct. 14, 1801, at Brussels, Belgium, the son of a landscape and flower painter. His mother was the former Catherine Thirion. From earliest boyhood, Plateau was trained to be an artist and the nature of his studies and work in later life indicated that he must have shown great promise, for he had the temperamental qualities of a great artist. After his elementary studies, his father lost no time in directing his son’s attention towards the arts by sending him to the Academy of Design at Brussels.

At the age of 14 Plateau was left an orphan, and was made a ward of his maternal uncle. In delicate health young Plateau was sent into the country to recuperate from the shock of losing both his parents in two years. The location selected was near Waterloo and Plateau had to take shelter in the woods for ten days and nights while the battle raged. Soon the plans Plateau’s father had made for him to study art were altered. The uncle was a lawyer and wished his ward to succeed him in that profession. Plateau himself evidently was strong-willed and persevering even at an early age, for during the next few years he studied both arts and sciences. This would make it possible for him to follow his father’s, his uncle’s, or his own wish. He wanted to strike out into a new field, and this he did.

Higher studies were carried on at the Royal College and in 1822, at the age of 21, Plateau entered the University of Liége as a candidate for a degree both in philosophy and letters, and in science. As the years progressed Plateau turned more and more of his attention toward science, especially problems concerning color, vision and the perception of motion. But all through life he retained the fullness of viewpoint of a man with a background and interests in many fields so his imagination never was dulled, as sometimes happens in the cases of specialists in a restricted field of science. The art of his father never left him.

While studying for the doctorate Plateau carried on his first important work in vision and motion which resulted in the scientific approach to the first motion picture machine. He investigated the visual effects of whirling a disk which was colored half in yellow, half in blue.

In 1827 part of Plateau’s research was published in Quetelet’s Correspondance Mathématique et Physique. Quetelet (1796–1874) was a pioneer in statistics and Plateau’s professor at the Royal College, and also taught at the Museum of Science and Letters in Belgium. The next year, 1828, Plateau sent another communication to M. Quetelet on the appearances produced by two lines turning around a point with uniform motion. In that letter Plateau referred to the work of Roget on persistence of vision published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, 1824.

Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), English doctor best known for his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, combined his medical work with interest in the sciences. On December 9, 1824, he read, at the Royal Society, a paper called, “Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical apertures.” Roget pointed out that the phenomenon had been noted but not explained by an anonymous contributor who signed himself “J. M.” in the Quarterly Journal of December 1, 1820. “J. M.” commented on the curvature of spokes when a wheel is in motion and is viewed through a series of vertical bars. Everyone has noted the strange rotations of motor car wheels when viewed under certain conditions, as in the modern motion picture. “J. M.” pointed out that at times the wheel appeared to rotate backwards; at other times, forward and still again seem to stand still. A nod of praise should be bestowed towards “J. M.” (these are not the initials of any of the better known English scientists of the period). Ten years later the great Faraday confessed he did not know the identity of this man who had stimulated those investigations which we now know led directly to the first actual motion pictures formed from hand-drawn designs.

Roget, in 1824, noted that a certain velocity and a certain amount of light were necessary before the “wheel phenomenon” was visible—both speed of motion and bright light source are necessary for the motion picture illusion. Roget said, “It is evident from the facts above stated that the deception in the appearance of the spokes must arise from the circumstances of separate parts only of each spoke being seen at the same moment; the remaining parts being concealed from view by the bars” (equivalent to the shutters in the motion picture machine). Roget continued, “so that it is evident that the several portions of one and the same line, seen through the intervals of the bars, form on the retina the images of so many different radii.” Roget remarked that the illusion was the same as when a bright object is whirled in a circle—“an impression made by a pencil of rays on the retina, if sufficiently vivid, will remain for a certain time after the cause has ceased.”

A few weeks later, on December 24, 1824, Roget lectured on the persistence of vision with regard to moving objects, a phenomenon first recognized by the ancient scientists.

Plateau wrote in 1828 as follows:

Today stroboscopic machines, based on the principles of Plateau’s devices, are used to study moving objects. In this way modern scientists learn more about the nature of movement and its stresses on wheels and other objects.

Plateau received the degree of doctor of physical and mathematical sciences from the University of Liége on June 3, 1829, when he was 28. His thesis was on “Certain Properties of the Impressions Produced by Light upon the Organ of Sight.” It is strange that such a learned paper would have so much influence on what was to be the modern motion picture.

The chief points—all of importance in building motion pictures—of the Plateau thesis dated April 24, 1829, were: First, the sensation (result of the picture presented to the eye) must stay for a time to form completely—this hinted definitely at the necessity of intermittent movement for a really successful and practical motion picture machine. Second, the sensations do not disappear immediately but gradually dim—this makes motion pictures possible. If each image disappeared all at once, only individual still pictures would be recognized. The gradually dimming makes possible fusion of one image with the next which results in appearance of motion. The third point covered was the relative effect on the eye of various colors. Plateau concluded that the intensity of the chief colors decreased from white, yellow, red, blue—in that order. He also announced results of perception of various colors at different angles, studies made in the shade and in the light. It was further pointed out that two colors—as two images—changed rapidly result in only one sensation or image.

After receiving his doctor’s degree from the University, Plateau taught at the Royal College of Liége while he continued his research on vision and related matters.

The first machine creating the illusion of motion from a series of drawings was described by Plateau in a letter to Quetelet dated Liége, December 5, 1829, with the scientific title, “Different Optical Experiments.” (Relative à différentes expériences d’optique.) A similar instrument was already referred to by Plateau in his paper written in the preceding year. Although the device made by Plateau in 1828 and described in the 1829 article followed by several years the introduction of the Thaumatrope, it rates as the first motion picture machine because the Thaumatrope was really only a scientific toy, just as Paris called it.

Plateau illustrated his letter describing his instrument in writing to Quetelet in answer to an inquiry. The drawing (opposite page) of Plateau shows that, though a scientist, he never forgot his early training and was something of an artist. The principles of his machine could be illustrated by drawings of lines and other geometrical figures, but Plateau chose a woman’s head.

In the following words Plateau described his instrument:

Lines or drawings to be studied are mounted on the two pulleys. The machine is of such a nature, Plateau pointed out, that drawings can be easily changed, the relative speeds of the two wheels (one serving as a shutter when drawings are used) can be regulated, alignment can be readjusted and by crossing the cords the disks can be made to rotate in opposite directions.

Plateau continued by explaining that when the speed on one disk is not an exact multiple of the other they do not keep the same relative positions after rotation.

There is the germ of the motion picture—a real instrument which makes pictures move.

The diagram illustrates a model in which “a perfectly regular image is produced from a deformed figure” turning in a speed proportional to the distortion behind the shutter disk.

Plateau pointed out that the deformed figure can be painted black and turn before a white surface, or be white and turn behind a slot pierced in a black disk. He said, “This last method is preferable to the other because it gives an image of greater lifelikeness....” This of course is the quality sought in all dramatic representations—realistic living pictures.

“For this effect,” he explained, “you design the deformed figure on white transparent paper and paint the surrounding space with a very opaque black, then make the experiment carefully, and place a strong light behind the paper.”

In the example shown in the drawing the two disks, mounted one behind the other, are rotated in an opposite direction, the motion of the deformed figure is double that of the shutter and the effect produced is that of the regular image shown in Figure 3.

Plateau then remarked, “The construction of these images is very simple.” He gave the method and an example. “While the shutter will be making a third part of a revolution all the points of the circle carrying the deformed figure will be present behind it and in consequence it will produce one regular complete image. Then during the second and third part of the revolution of the shutter it will be able to form itself into second and third images resembling the first.” These were the words Plateau used to explain the nature of the operations of the first movie machine.

He concluded: “As you are master of the production of the figures you can make them as bizarre and as irregular as you wish.” Producers of the modern motion picture have indeed made pictures that are both “bizarre” and “irregular.” Plateau would have liked modern motion pictures because he was fond of the theatre, especially liking comedies.

While Plateau was making the experiments in 1829 which led to scientific presentations of visual and optical phenomena as well as construction of the first motion picture machine to illustrate those principles as well as to entertain, a tragic event happened. Plateau in his investigations of seeing light and motion gave special attention to the chief source of all light on earth, the sun.

One day, to see for himself the effects of a great stimulus, the greatest possible in nature on his eye, he stared at the sun for 25 seconds without glasses or other protection. The intensity was great and the effect equal. He was blind for the rest of that day. In a few days his sight came back but it was permanently injured. It gradually waned and was gone in 1843. A choroid inflammation persisted and blotted out the vision of one of the greatest investigators of vision in all history.

During the period while his sight was gradually going, Plateau continued work on vision and made great contributions to the then unknown motion picture. From 1843 he had to discontinue teaching on account of total blindness but this did not stop his experiments.

In 1830 Plateau published a further explanation of his wheel device in Quetelet’s Journal.

In 1831 and 1832 Plateau and Michael Faraday (1791–1867), English scientist, had a written argument over certain phases of priority in observing the “wheel phenomenon” which led to the motion picture. On December 10th, 1830, Faraday, the son of a blacksmith, who attracted the attention of Sir Humphry Davy, addressed the Royal Institution of Great Britain “On the Peculiar Class of Optical Deceptions.” The paper was published in February, 1831, in the Institution’s Journal. Faraday, called by Tyndall, “the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen,” was attracted to the wheel phenomenon which he noted “J. M.” had discussed in 1820 and Roget in 1824. At the lead mills of Messrs. Maltsby Faraday saw cog wheels rapidly revolving one in one direction, the other in another. The optical effect was curious. He designed in his laboratory a disk machine in order to create the same illusion, noting that the effects produced were sometimes beautiful. Faraday said that the device of the revolving wheels could be spun before a mirror and interesting results observed. He did not propose the use of images or pictures. Mr. Wheatstone, Faraday said, was engaged in the general exploration of the subject and hoped soon that the results would be made public.

Plateau later in the year wrote in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, a scientific publication printed in Paris and edited by Guy-Lussac and Arago, that scientists both in France and England were studying the effects of two revolving wheels, one placed behind the other and each revolving at different speeds.

Plateau claimed priority in these words: “Several years ago I observed those phenomena and from that conducted experiments whose results were published. My experiments attracted little attention outside the country and Mr. Faraday without doubt had no knowledge of my work.... It is because such a man as Mr. Faraday has decided that the phenomenon in question was not unworthy of his attention that I attach some merit to the honor of having observed it before him.”

In the 1832 edition of the Correspondance Mathématique et Physique of Quetelet, Plateau remarked (in a note dated January 20, 1833) that following the letter published in the Annales of November, 1831, “He (Faraday) wrote me and recognized in a manner most flattering for me the priority of my observations.” Plateau finally concluded that Faraday had had some knowledge after all of his earlier work when the Englishman wrote his paper at the end of 1830.

Plateau acknowledged that Faraday’s paper had some interesting observations which he explained and enlarged upon. Following the principle outlined in his work of 1828, Plateau then constructed the first Fantascope or Phénakisticope, the first machine which created illusions of motion from a series of pictures. Madou, a brother-in-law of Quetelet, was credited with copying Plateau’s drawing with extreme care.

Plateau conceived the idea of having successively different pictures which would give the illusion of motion for use on the revolving disk. With each figure showing some changes of position from the preceding, the illusion is that the figures move and not the disk; and so it is with modern motion pictures. We have no consciousness of the movement of film through the machine before our eyes—only of movement of the figures on the film as projected on the screen. (Illustration facing page 89.)

Plateau also pointed out that a strong light was necessary for the motion pictures—as today—and that the “projector” must be a certain distance from the mirror (now a screen) on which the images are seen.

“I shall not describe the variety of curious illusion which can be produced by this new method,” Plateau concluded. “I leave to the imagination of persons who would try these experiences the care to find out the most interesting.”

Motion picture producers down to this day, using their imagination, have followed the challenge of Plateau, and still the field is inexhaustible.

In the Annales de Chimie et de Physique for 1833 Plateau gave a further explanation of his device, named by others the Phénakisticope. Others had also commercialized it. McLeans’ Optical Illusions, No. 26 Haymarket Street, London, and other firms were selling models based on Plateau’s invention. “I wish to take this opportunity to state, that while the Phénakisticope has been made from an idea which I have published on this new method of creating illusions, I have no part whatsoever in the execution of this instrument which leaves much to be desired according to reports. The theory and experiments have shown that to obtain results as perfect as possible it is necessary to take certain precautions which have been omitted in the Phénakisticope.”

Plateau went on to explain that he had made some models in which the necessary steps had been taken and “these models now constitute a new instrument which has been published in London under the name of Fantascope.”

The improved instrument was described with the original dancer and marching men as illustrations. He also pointed out that the disks must revolve at a certain speed—if too slow, the illusion of motion is not present, and if too rapid the figures become blurred.

At about the same time Plateau invented his Phénakisticope or Fantascope independently, the same device was invented by Simon Ritter von Stampfer, an Austrian geometrician and geologist. Stampfer was born October 28, 1792, in the Tyrol. As a young boy he stared at the sun for a long period but recovered his normal sight after the image of the sun persisted for 24 days. When a professor of practical geometry at the Polytechnical Institute at Vienna, Stampfer published his account of the Stroboscope, as he called it, in 1834. Stampfer in his article mentioned Dr. Paris’ Thaumatrope, Dr. Roget’s paper on the persistence of vision in regard to wheel spokes and the paper of Faraday—all mentioned above. Stampfer’s treatment of the disks to create the illusion of motion was a mathematical one. He explained many complicated mathematical formulae and unlike the Plateau papers his were not accompanied by a drawing. Stampfer, though not having Plateau’s artistic talent, was a more practical man. On May 7, 1833, he took out an Imperial patent on his invention. Stampfer died on November 10, 1864, in Vienna.

Plateau himself is the best authority for the respective claims of himself and Stampfer, though as always he may have been much more modest and generous than the facts warranted for basically his disk had much greater influence than Stampfer’s and his research was started first.

While describing an improved form of his original Anorthoscope, or machine used to create distorted images developed first in 1828 and 1829, Plateau wrote on the invention of the Phénakisticope, Fantascope or Stroboscope, in 1836 in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Belgium:

Roget also may be considered a pioneer in this field. In 1834 he wrote that Faraday’s writing had called again to his attention wheel devices and that in the Spring of 1831 he had constructed several “which I showed to many of my friends,” he wrote, “but in consequence of occupations and cares of a more serious kind I did not publish any account of this invention which was last year reproduced on the continent.”

From 1835 until 1843 Plateau continued his work and teaching at the University of Liége in his capacity of professor of experimental physics, taking time off to be married in 1840 to Fanny Clavareau. But all the while the man who had helped to bring visual education and entertainment to millions who were to come after him was gradually going blind. He was a popular teacher, despite his handicap.

From 1844, when his vision was entirely gone, Plateau worked continually at home, having set up there a laboratory in which friends and relatives acted as his assistants. Plateau himself gave all the instructions to his aids; they reported to him every detail of the results of the experiments and he then dictated the notes covering the work, relying on a remarkable memory. Later the notes would be revised for publication. Plateau supplied the imagination and piercing intelligence; his helpers supplied the eyes and were the reporters. Plateau was the editor. Scientific critics have held that he not only overcame his handicap but actually did better work.

In 1849 Plateau published in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Belgium further studies on revolving disks and the use of a shutter. This time he also treated the effects when colored, and vari-colored disks are used. The system was similar to the Anorthoscope. Sixteen images were mounted on the margin of a glass disk. Another disk with four slots was revolved four times as swiftly. A number of spectators could see the effect at the same time. The chief illusion was a devil blowing up a fire. Edison’s peep-show film machine of 1891 also had a revolving disk with four slots.

The last time Plateau wrote for publication directly on the motion picture machine was in 1852, 20 years after his invention. Once more he had to lash back at critics, this time at those who said he stole not from another of his own time but from the ancient Romans.

In the May 30, 1852 issue of Cosmos, a French weekly review of science, edited by Abbé Moigno, comments were made about an article written by one Dr. Sinsteden in the German science review, Annalen der Physik und Chemie, which asserted that Lucretius in the fourth book of De Rerum Natura described the Fantascope or Phénakisticope invented by Plateau “with such exactitude that, if it were not for the long series of theoretical considerations and practical experiments that led the Belgian scientist to arrive at the construction of the apparatus one would suppose that he took the idea from the Roman philosopher.”

To back up the position, the text from Lucretius was quoted in Latin and French and Abbé Moigno made another comment, “What is the effect of that but the Phénakisticope—could Lucretius have described it in terms more precise or more clear?”

Plateau replied in the issue of July 25 of the same year and answered for all time the assertion that Lucretius had invented the first motion picture machine many hundreds of years before.

Moigno realized his mistake and prefaced Plateau’s words with an apology, “We are always ready to retract the errors which we print. Our learned friend, Plateau, has written us today about a translation written from a preconceived idea. He has a hundred reasons for complaint.”

Plateau’s few lines were devastating. He pointed out that the passage of Lucretius used by Dr. Sinsteden and picked up by Abbé Moigno had suppressed one line of the text and had mistranslated others. It was proved that Lucretius was describing not an optical instrument but dreams.

Plateau concluded, “These few words suffice, I hope, to show the true relationship which exists between the passage of Lucretius and the Phénakisticope, and to remove from me all suspicion of having stolen the idea of my instrument from antiquity.”

A re-examination of the Latin text of Lucretius leaves no doubt whatsoever that Plateau was correct and Lucretius was writing about dreams and not the first movie device. The lines of Lucretius talk about images, the imagination and dreams. Dr. Sinsteden and others in the 19th century who believed that Lucretius was describing an instrument were confused by failing to understand his words and confusing his theory of vision with an actual piece of apparatus and its effects. It was a simple mistake and accounts for Lucretius’ recorded connection with the origin of the motion picture which has been repeated in many books.

A few years before his death Plateau published a complete, annotated bibliography of works on vision from the earliest time to his own day. He started with Aristotle and followed the entire historical trail. About 100 years before his own experiments, the first efforts to measure the persistence of vision were made. All the many years he was blind he was most interested in light, color, vision, the illusion of motion and related phenomena. Plateau regularly attended scientific meetings and his fame was well known throughout the scientific world. He was well known for his religious devotion and piety.

Plateau, honored by his scientific colleagues and the Belgian Government, died at Ghent on September 15, 1883, a few years before the motion picture was presented to the public and acclaimed throughout the world. The art science of magic shadows had made great progress under this Belgian who was endowed with rare talent and an indomitable spirit.