Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistiscope.
Plateau in 1843
Plateau's phenakistiscope
Statique expérimentale et théorique des liquides soumis aux seules forces moléculaires, 1873
The phenakistiscope was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed Fantascope and Stroboscopische Scheiben by its inventors, it has been known under many other names until the French product name Phénakisticope became common. The phenakistiscope is regarded as one of the first forms of moving media entertainment that paved the way for the future motion picture and film industry. Similar to a GIF animation, it can only show a short continuous loop.
A family viewing animations in a mirror through the slits of stroboscopic discs (detail of an illustration by E. Schule on the box label for Magic Disk - Disques Magiques, c. 1833)
A phenakistoscope (described in the display as a "Phantasmascope") with cards. On display in Bedford Museum, England.
Joseph Plateau's illustration in Corresp. Math. (1833)
A paper zoopraxiscope disc by Eadweard Muybridge (1893)