It is a precursor of the cinematographic projectors created in 1879 by Eadweard Muybridge (pseudonym of the photographer Edward James Muggeridge) that initially served to settle an argument between American tycoons about the trotting of horses: Leland Stanford said that at some point the animal had its four legs in the air and his friend James Keene that he always trotted with at least one hoof on the ground. Using an ingenious mechanism of sequenced cameras, Muybridge photographed a galloping horse and stitched the shots together on a glass disc that he spun in front of a lamp, thus projecting an animation where Stanford could be seen to be right. This method was used with other animals for its study and the invention was called 'zoopraxiscope', from the Greek 950; 969; 959; 957; (zoon "living being, animal") 960; 961; 945; 958; 953; 962; (praxis "action, movement") 963; 954; 959; 960; 949; 953; 957; (scopein "observe"). See kinetoscope, nickelodeon.
