The first time I recall seeing a flip book was in the 1981 movie “Ragtime.” I remember watching with the amazement of a kid as the immigrant Tateh held the book in one hand and with his thumb flipped through pages of photos, creating a movement that mimicked a motion picture.
The character, played by Mandy Patinkin, created a flip book of a little girl skating, and demonstrated it for a merchant who agreed to buy his “movie book” and others like it. The movie is based on a 1975 book of the same name by E.L. Doctorow that was a bestseller.
The flip book was one of the most fascinating aspects of the movie for me, along with the character Coalhouse Walker Jr. A ragtime musician played by Howard E. Rollins Jr., he goes to tragic lengths to restore both his dignity and his Model T Ford after it was damaged by some white men. The movie, which takes place in the 1900s, featured the music of Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime,” who made this musical genre famous with his “Maple Leaf Rag.”
At auction recently, I came across one of those flip books, the first I’d actually handled. Its star was a horse named Dan Patch, which in 1906 broke the world record for the fastest mile in a harness race, at 1:55. The reverse side of the pages showed stats and photos of Dan Patch and another horse named Minor Heir, a photo of Dan Patch’s private car, directions on how to work the flip book and an explanation of how photos were shot during Patch’s championship race.
The horse was owned by a Minneapolis-area horse breeder named M.W. Savage, and the book was produced by the Winthrop Moving Picture Co. of New York. The flip book was published in 1909 and reprinted in 1986.
By the time the book was first published, flip books were very popular. They had been around in some form since the early 19th century in France, Germany and Great Britain, and later in the United States. Englishman John Barnes Linnett patented the first flip book in 1868 and called it a kineograph, which presented the images in book form rather than on a circular rotating drum as had been used in the past.
The book could be flipped front to back or reverse. As it was flipped the images seemed to be in motion, employing a concept that would later be used in motion pictures. It was called a thumb book, fingertip book, folioscope, flip movie and hand cinema. The images first consisted of drawings and then photos. Here are some early flip books.
Thomas Edison, the inventor who experimented with motion pictures, produced flip books. In 1896, he created one to accompany a 20-second short titled “The Kiss” with a scene taken from a theatrical play.
Most of the flip books seemed to be tame, but there were some naughty ones. After the invention of the Mutoscope and Edison’s Kinetograph, which were basically mechanical flip books, folks could view the scenes through a peep-hole viewer on a coin-operated device.
Flip books were available on various subjects, from cartoons to product advertising. They could be found in cereal and Cracker Jack boxes, and handed out as promotions for cigarettes and department stores. In more recent times, the dancing baby segment on the 1990s “Ally McBeal” TV series led to a dancing baby flip book.
Sporting events seemed to be a natural for them, as in Dan Patch’s victory. Another was the 1921 match between boxers Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier.
Dan Patch became a famous and beloved horse whom Savage bought in 1902 for $60,000 – “the cheapest horse I ever bought and he has paid for himself inside three years,” Savage boasted. Dan Patch was so good that other horse owners didn’t want to race against him.
The horse made history with its 1:55 victory on Sept. 8, 1906, at the Minnesota State Fair race track in front of more than 90,000 people. Savage was so proud that he renamed his company the Dan Patch 1:55 Stock Farm Food Company. Three films were made of Dan Patch’s races.
