The first publisher to mass-produce books with moving pictures was Dean & Son of Ludgate Hill, London. From about the middle of the 19th Century the firm issued many children's rhyme and story books with hand-coloured pictures that could be animated by pulling a paper tab at the bottom of each page. The effects are mainly simple but charming: an arm lifts, a mouth opens, a cradle rocks, etc.
Over half a century later, a German satirical cartoonist, Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) developed the technique. Using a far more complex system of levers, armatures and wire pivots, he designed a dazzling array of children's novelty books in which the plates positively spring to life at the pull of a single tab - one picture often featuring five or six different (even contrary) movements.
Meggendorfer's achievements as an innovator are impressive but some sixty years later (during the 1940s) an American illustrator -Julian Wehr - produced similar animations but by much simpler means. Behind illustrations in his spirally-bound books are paper discs that connect, through holes in the page, to moving parts: by sliding round a tab, the pictures animate.
Shown below, a dramatic cock-fight from Lothar Meggendorfer's 'Für Brave Kinder' published by Braun & Schneider in Munich, 1884:
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Place
mouse over each number to animate.
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OTHER PULL-TAB MOVABLES TO LOOK OUT FOR
• Many pop-up books packaged by Graphics International during the 1960s and Published by Random House or Hallmark in America and Roger Schlesinger's RHS Publications in Britain contain a variety of effects including many variations on the pull-tab movable.
More recent examples include:
• Robert Crowther's 'Deep Down Underground' published by Walker Books, 1998
• Aardman's 'Wallace & Gromit - a Close Shave' published by BBC Worldwide, 1998