paul roget

Name of animator/inventor: Paul Roget
Invention: Thaumatrope
Date of Invention: 1828

The thaumatrope is among the simplest of the "persistence of vision" toys that were introduced in the early 19th century. In its basic form it is a card with a different picture on each surface and string attached to each side. When the string is wound up then released the card spins rapidly merging the two pictures together. Less common were examples like the mechanical toy below where two images of different phases of a movement caused the image to move.

source: http://brightbytes.com/collection/thaum.html