Beale's Choreutoscope

Beale's Choreutoscope c.1866. Featuring sequential drawn images of a skeleton.

First devised by Beale in 1866, the Choreutoscope was a type of magic lantern slide containing six separate pictures. These were projected onto a screen in rapid succession to give an impression of movement. It was the first projection device to use an intermittent movement, which became the basis of all cine cameras and projectors. These hand painted skeletons fidgeted in all directions, bending femurs and tibias, playing with their skulls, or thumbing their noses. The same themes recur from century to century, throughout the imagery of the lantern.