Playing with vision: optical toys and the emergence of childrens media culture

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In this richly detailed work Meredith Bak explores how the historical legacy of optical toys figures into the formation of children's media culture. Bak's analysis draws on her own archival research, as well as scholarship in a variety of disciplines including film and cinema studies, media archeology, history, literature, and childhood studies. The book is organized around a close analysis of the use and context for nineteenth and twentieth optical media -- the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, zoetrope, praxinoscope, movable toy books, kaleidoscope, and stereoscope. While these mechanisms are fascinating in themselves, they are often seen merely as precursors to more fully developed film and cinema technologies. Bak restores these devices to their original context - middle-class nurseries and living rooms - and reveals how the types of play that they encouraged were engaged with changing ideas of childhood, the psychology of vision, and the education of the senses. One reviewer remarks, "The author's article length work is already being cited by colleagues in the field of Film and Media Studies, particularly the capaciousness of its innovative approach to media formats that link historical forms to contemporary media.