The Thaumatrope is a was an optical toy that was formed of two disks with a picture on it attached to a piece of string or stuck in between a stick and when spun around the stick/string they formed the pictures together. The pictures appeared put together due to an illusion called Persistence of vision, the capability of the human eye to remember an image for a split second after it is replaced by the next one in the sequence. The eye keeps seeing each image shortly after they've disappeared so there fore they merge together.
The inventor of the Thaumatrope was an English man called John Ayrton Paris sometime during his life which was 1785 – 24 December 1856. Its not 100% that he was the inventor but he is widly credited as the inventor.
The advantages of a Thaumatrope is that they're very cheap and easy to make as they only require 2 piece of card and a string/stick. The disadvantage of the Thuamatrope is that is requires great drawing skills to actually make it look good or convincing. It is also very limited as you can only use two pictures instead of using many.
The first Thaumatrope was sold on April the 2nd 1825. They were sold in boxes of 12 or 18 for the price of seven shilling for 12 discs or half a guinea for 18. Soon after they came out pirate copies came out and were popular due to their price which was boxes of six discs for one shilling.
Here is an example on to make a Thuamatrope
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