1 Templates, Toys, and Text: Optical Toys in Nineteenth-Century Children's Culture

An article in the 1881 Christmas edition of the British weekly magazine the Boy's Own Paper outlined “the near and far limits of a vast optical playground” and introduced a series of optical toys—the thaumatrope, the phenakistoscope, and colored spinning tops. A special chromolithographed supplement accompanied the article with four preprinted thaumatropes and two phenakistoscope disks that boys could cut out and assemble (figure 1.1) The paper toys depicted familiar motifs: a rat in a cage, a horse bucking its rider, a dancer, and a boy eating an orange.
1
The article asserts that “optical toy sport was the first sport of baby life to most of us,” suggesting widespread familiarity with these toys and their optical effects.
2
The toys' inclusion in the magazine, moreover, highlights print culture as a core way that optical knowledge circulated. Located at the interstices of print, visual, and material cultures, the colorful paper toys were meant to be assembled and manipulated and to inspire original creations. The supplement's production was enabled by the technology of the chromolithograph, its distribution facilitated by the established network of the periodical's circulation—a form and industry that flourished over the course of the century. The toys and the optical effects they generated made exceptional subject matter for such supplements.