The Zoetrope

A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. More @ wiki. Some modern zoetropes work with spinning set-ups of physical 3d models and strobe lights to produce very impressive 3D animated illusion effects. Pixar made a very cool zoetrope based on Toy Story:

The quality isn't too good because the camera and strobe lights are out of sync it's very flashy, but you get the idea of how it works. This video shows how the Toy Story zoetrope should look: http://www.navone.org/Media/Movies/ZoetropeLoop3.mov (For some reason you need to copy/paste this URL in your address bar otherwise it doesn't seem to work) Here is a very nice zoetrope at the Burning Man festival:

And finally something very cool similar to a zoetrope, the Phonographantasmascope. This one works by syncing only the camera with a moving vinyl LP record. Its explained in the video:

I'd really like to see one in real life now.