Filoscope: David Devant The Mysterious Rabbit

Optical toy: A filoscope with printed kinetic photographic subject 'David Devant - The Mysterious Rabbit' with picture sheets numbered 3 - 124.

These pictures were originally produced by R W Paul around July 1896 for cinematographic projection. Devant's autobiography described the rabbit trick as 'the first animated picture ever taken of a performer...shot by R W Paul on the roof of the Alhambra Theatre... This picture wsa reproduced in a little device called the Filiscope [sic].'

Invented by Robert W Paul's (1869-1943) cameraman, Henry W Short, this was a small hand-held flip-book device, using a lever to flip over separate pictures to give the illusion of movement. Each filoscope contained a hundred or so frames reproduced from a professional film, many of them by Paul. They were marketed from 1897 onwards by the Anglo-French Filoscope Syndicate.