Chapter 1 Animate Time Today we live in an age where moving images are all around us: television, motion pictures, billboards, the Internet, and even cell (mobile) phones. It is hard to imagine that just a little over a century ago there was no such thing as moving images. Before we get involved with synthetically creating motion through anima- tion, we need to explore the development of motion pictures. Persistence of Vision In the 19th century, many fun and amusing devices were created to evoke motion into two-dimensional objects. One of the simplest was the thaumatrope, invented by Dr. John Paris of England in 1824 to demon- strate a phenomenon known as persistence of vision. A typical thaumatrope consisted of a rapidly rotating disc. On one side of the disc was a drawing of a bird on a perch on a blank field of white; on the other side was a drawing of an empty birdcage. When the disc was spun rapidly past the eye, it appeared to the viewer that