Today’s logo at Google.com has been replaced with an animation representing animation itself — a modern artist’s interpretation of the phenakistiscope, a spinning disc invented in 1833 that’s considered one of the precursors to modern cinema. Like most Google Doodles, it’s to celebrate the birthday of a person who moved the world forward, namely Belgian physicist Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau, who’s often credited with inventing the device.
But strangely, Google’s own description fails to mention that Plateau isn’t the only one who invented the phenakistiscope. It’s one of history’s famous cases of simultaneous invention, where Austrian professor Simon Stampfer was simultaneously studying the same optical illusion,…