Abstract
The Spirograph – not to be confused with the familiar drawing toy – was an innovative but utterly forgotten device for presenting moving pictures. It utilized spinning discs on which microphotographs were arranged in a spiral, and which could function either as a projector or as an individual peep-viewer. ‘Invented’ by Theodore Brown around 1906, it was adopted by and developed under Charles Urban, who attempted unsuccessfully to bring it to the market, primarily for educational use, following his return to the United States in 1916. This article charts the failure of this form of non-theatrical moving pictures, examining their place within traditions of didactic ideals about visual education, including the notion of a ‘living book of knowledge’. It also relates the Spirograph to a variety of media genealogies, identifying its important place in a history of ‘proto-interactive’ media machines and as a harbinger of future forms of database exploration.
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