There is no evidence that the Langenheims combined their glass projection slides with the magic disk of Plateau to achieve motion pictures. They made one contribution and seemed to be satisfied with that. And it was successful for them, for in the next twenty-five years many thousands of these slides were sold in the United States.
Others who perhaps were much more familiar with the Plateau-Stampfer magic disks than the Langenheims combined their process with the Wheel of Life. The link nevertheless with the Langenheims is direct and immediate. All the followers used the photos on glass slides and the method was popularized by the Langenheim exhibition at the Exposition. Relatively little was done, however, in combining the glass photo slides in motion picture sequence with the magic lantern, because at the time there was no method of obtaining a number of successive photos of the same action.
Jules Duboscq (1817–1886) in Paris copied the Langenheim process of glass plates with great success. Duboscq was an exhibitor of optical instruments at the Exposition of 1851. He had been the licensee of Daguerre for England, but the method was never popular there as it was in the United States. On February 16, 1852, Duboscq received a French patent on an apparatus which combined photos and the Plateau Phénakisticope or Fantascope. His device was called the Stereofantascope or Bioscope.
One Duboscq model had two strips of pictures made with a binocular camera running next to each other on a vertical disk, as the original Plateau model, and the whole was rapidly revolved before a mirror by a spectator who wore specially-made glasses. The second and better system had the pictures mounted on the horizontal Fantascope or Wheel of Life, as developed by Horner in 1834, with one picture mounted above the other. There was, however, slight distortion because the pictures were bent to fit around the inside of the cylinder.
Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875), who also combined photos and the magic disk, in 1852, had a marked influence on magic picture development during the middle part of the 19th century. In fact, it may well be that the efforts expended in trying to combine the third dimensional effect of his stereoscope with the magic disk retarded development of screen projection of motion pictures.
Wheatstone was a timid man, though a great scientist, and frequently had the great Michael Faraday announce his inventions at the Royal Society meetings. The Stereoscope was invented in 1838. (The reader may recall that centuries before d’Aguilon had coined the name “Stereo” for “seeing solid” effects). The Stereoscope achieves its effect by blending into one image pictures or drawings of an object taken from slightly different points of view so that the impression of relief is obtained in our sense of vision. Without our two eyes the stereoscopic effect would not be possible.
It had been known for a very long time that the two eyes did not see the identical picture. Wheatstone made an instrument which took advantage of this fact. He said he conceived the idea in 1835 and made the first presentation of the Stereoscope in August of 1838 at a meeting of the British Association held at Newcastle.
In 1850 Wheatstone was in Paris and showed his improved Stereoscope to Abbé Moigno, to Soleil and his son-in-law, Duboscq, who were commercial instrument makers, and to members of the French Institute. Its value was immediately recognized not only for amusement but for the arts and sciences, especially portraiture and sculpture, Moigno reported in La Presse of December 28, 1850. Duboscq immediately started to make one and used Daguerreotypes in it. Moigno praised Duboscq’s “intelligence, activity, affability, indefatigable ardour.” In 1851 Moigno brought Duboscq to the attention of the Queen by presenting her with a Wheatstone-type Stereoscope which he had made. That was the year Louis Napoleon seized power and was named president for a ten year term. In November, 1852 he proclaimed himself Emperor.
Wheatstone also developed a combination of photos and the Plateau disk which was fitted with a cog which made each photo rest momentarily as it was held before the mirror. The same instrument was made in France under the name of Heliocinegraphe.
Antoine François Jean Claudet (1797–1867), was a Frenchman who married an English girl and moved to London in 1827. In 1852 he combined the Plateau-Stampfer disk with the Langenheim method of photographs on glass plates. It is claimed that, while Claudet started work ahead of him, Duboscq had satisfactory results first. Claudet’s experiments were successful in May of 1852, about one year after the Langenheim exhibit at the Exposition. In 1853 Claudet became a member of the Royal Society.