ZoopraxographyA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWpolitics & economics; media: power,
effects, influence.
Zoetrope Or ‘wheel of life’. Early nineteenth-
century ‘toy’ in which pictures inside a spinning
drum, viewed from the outside through slits,
appear to be in motion. Invented in 1834 by
Englishman W.G. Horner, the zoetrope simply
but eff ectively demonstrated the phenomenon
of persistence of vision, the realization of
which opened the way for the birth of cinema.
Zones In Th e Hidden Dimension: Man’s Use of
Space in Public and Private (Bodley Head, 1966),
Edward T. Hall identifies four distinct zones,
or territorial spaces, in which most men and
women operate. These are intimate distance;
personal distance; social distance; and public
distance, each with its close and far phases. See
proxemics.
Zoopraxography Pioneer photographer
Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) was not
the inventor of cine-fi lm, but he made the fi rst
photographic moving pictures, a process he
called Zoopraxography, fifteen years before
Lumière’s fi rst fi lms. Muybridge described his
Zoopraxiscope as being ‘the fi rst apparatus ever
used, or constructed, for synthetically demon-
strating movements analytically photographed
from life’.
In 1878 he set up an experiment at Palo Alto,
California, to ascertain by photography whether
all four hooves of a galloping horse were ever
simultaneously clear of the ground (they are).
Twenty-four cameras were aligned along the
running track, each triggered off by the horse as
it galloped past.
The Zoopraxiscope consisted of a spinning
glass disc bearing the photographs in sequence
of movement. The disc, when attached to a
central shaft, revolved in front of the condens-
ing lens of a projecting lantern parallel to and
close to another disc fi xed to a tubular shaft that
encircled the other, and round which it rotated
in the opposite direction.
By 1885 Muybridge had produced an encyclo-
paedia of motion: men and women, clothed and
unclothed, performed simple actions such as
running, drinking cups of tea or shoeing horses;
and a massive and varied study of animals and
birds in movement. His carefully catalogued
work was published in 1887. See topic guide
under media history.lines) headline, topping the deck with ‘Civil War
Plot By Socialists’ Masters’. With the exception
of the Daily Herald, the entire British press
swallowed and regurgitated the story. Th e Times
discovered ‘Another Red Plot in Germany’ and
on voting day the Daily Express warned, in red
ink, ‘Do Not Vote Red Today’. Labour lost fi fty
seats but gained more than a million votes.
Eventually (but always too late) the truth will
out; and in February 1999 Gill Bennett, Chief
Historian at the UK Foreign Offi ce, produced
a 126-page report, commissioned by the-then
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, pointing a sure
finger of accusation at Desmond Morton, an
MI6 offi cer and friend of Winston Churchill, as
the offi cial who supplied the Mail with its sensa-
tional disclosure. Also named is Major Joseph
Ball, an MI5 offi cer who joined the Conservative
Central Office in 1926. Bennett reported that
the forged letter was ‘probably leaked from SIS
[the Secret Intelligence Service, alias MI6] by
somebody to the Conservative Party Central
Office’. See disinformation; freedom of
information. See also topic guides under
media: freedom, censorship; media: power,
effects, influence.
Zircon aff air In 1986 in the UK, New Statesman
journalist Duncan Campbell made a series of
six TV programmes for the BBC entitled Secret
Society. Th e fi rst of these was about a Ministry
of Defence project – Zircon – to put a spy
satellite into space, at an estimated cost of 5m.
On 15 January 1987, Alisdair Milne, the BBC’s
soon-to-be-dismissed Director-General, banned
the Zircon programme on grounds of national
security, a decision the Observer made public on
18 January.
Th e most notorious aspect of the Zircon aff air
was the police raids. Special Branch descended
upon the New Statesman offi ces – upon Camp-
bell’s home as well as the homes of two other
Statesman journalists; and fi nally there was a
raid on the Glasgow offi ces of BBC Scotland,
where all six of the Secret Society films were
seized. Two days before, Milne had been sacked
as the BBC’s Director-General.
Th e irony of the case is that Zircon was not
really a closely guarded state secret; indeed
the position of the proposed satellite was fi led
by the Ministry of Defence at the International
Communications Union, an institution of which
the former USSR was a member. Eventually the
Zircon programme was transmitted by the BBC
in September 1988, by which time the Zircon
project had been cancelled. See topic guides
under media: freedom, censorship; media: