Thaumatrope

Thaumatrope

A Thaumatrope is a toy from the 19th Century, created by John Ayrton Paris in 1825. It is made up of a disk or sheet of paper with an image on each side and two pieces of string that are attached to the edges of the disk. It is then rapidly rotated or spun around so that the two images can combine together as one. This creates the optical illusion that is the 'persistence of vision'. An example of this would be having a bird cage on one side of the disk and a bird on the other side. When spun around the images will coincide with one another.

The images merge together when twirled around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SivM3UVHMeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOLE2OzoIYw


Advantage: 

It was and is still a very easy toy to create without any difficulty and also at a low cost.

Disadvantage:

With it being a simple toy, it wasn't very hard for a slightly more advanced toy to be made that would easily overtake it.