The Collaborative International Dictionary
Praxinoscope \Prax*in"o*scope\, n. [Gr. ? action + -scope.] (Opt.) An instrument, similar to the phenakistoscope, for presenting to view, or projecting upon a screen, images the natural motions of real objects.
Wiktionary
n. An animation device invented in 1877 and used in early image projection
Wikipedia
The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.
In 1889 Reynaud developed the Théâtre Optique, an improved version capable of projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. This allowed him to show hand-drawn animated cartoons to larger audiences, but it was soon eclipsed in popularity by the photographic film projector of the Lumière brothers.
Usage examples of "praxinoscope".
But, although he was passionately devoted to this hobby and spent most of his spare hours closeted in his study with his Praxinoscope, his Phasmatrope and his Zoopraxiscope, projecting on to a white screen photographs of plants and animals that often seemed to move, these studies remained no more than peripheral to his business, which consisted of fleecing the living by arranging interviews with their departed.