The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
A stroboscope is a light that freezesmotion by flashing at regular, controlled intervals. People dancing under such a light appear to be almost immobile. This illusion of immobility or slow motion stems from the persistence of vision--the eye's ability to retain an image for a brief moment after it has vanished. This phenomenon also underlies the principle of motion pictures.
Joseph Plateau (1801-1883), a Belgian physicist, built the phénakistiscope, a device with flashing lights akin to the stroboscope, in 1832. In the same year, an Austrian named Simon von Stampfer devised the first actual stroboscope. In the 1920s, Harold Edgerton, an American engineer, pioneered the use of modern stroboscopes in photography. These strobes produce extremely short flashes of intense light from a gas-discharge lamp. Strobe photography can capture multiple images of bullets and other fast-moving objects with extreme clarity. Stroboscopes are used in industry to study the movement of machinery and in science to analyze objects as they undergo rapid, cyclic motion, making the objects appear stationary or nearly so by matching the stroboscope's rate of flashing to the object's frequency of motion. Strobe lights are used in this way in automotive timing instruments.