1831 W. R. Johnson in Jrnl. Franklin Inst. 7 New Ser. 361 (heading) Description of an apparatus, called the Rotascope, for exhibiting several phenomena, and illustrating certain laws of rotary motion.

1853 Appletons' Mechanics' Mag. 1 Apr. 94/1 By means of an instrument lately contrived called the rotoscope, it is strikingly illustrated that a revolving body has a tendency to retain its axis of rotation in the same position.

1865 B. Silliman Princ. Physics (ed. 2) i. ii. 35 The gyroscope, or rotascope, is an instrument exhibiting some remarkable results of the combination of rotary motions.

2003 W. Tobin Life & Sci. Léon Foucault ix. 162/2 Instrument makers had constructed various devices involving spinning discs to illustrate precession and nutation... A similar instrument called the rotascope had been produced in Philadelphia in the 1830s.

1904 U.S. Patent 774,632 1/1 Toys founded upon the general principles of persistence of vision have long been known under the various names of ‘phenakistoscope’, ‘thaumotrope’, ‘zoetrope’, ‘stroboscope’, and ‘rotoscope’..all of which aim to give figures the movement of life or action by presenting in rapid succession a series of figures, each of which has a slightly-advanced position.

1907 Automotor Jrnl. 30 Nov. 1742/2 By means of a rotoscope, worked electrically, a graphic demonstration of the principle of the Hans Renold silent chain was afforded.

1928 Flight 20 Sept. 827/2 (caption) Checking the valve motion of an Armstrong Siddeley ‘Jaguar’ engine running at full load and speed, by means of the Ashdown Rotoscope.

1968 Adv. in Heat Transfer 5 211 A stationary image of the rotating system was obtained by viewing it through a rotoscope.

1978 D. L. Holmes Holmes Princ. Physical Geol. (ed. 3) xxxi. 716/1 These illustrations..show the top-surface flow pattern, photographed through a ‘rotoscope’ coupled to the turntable.

1907 Photogr. News 22 Feb. 149/1 The Secretary..also introduced several novelties in stereoscopy, amongst those worthy of note being the Rotoscope, a unique and compact stereoscope folding up in the form of a book.

1935 Pop. Sci. Monthly June 28/2 To restore muscular teamwork, cards bearing mutually complementary pictures are placed in a machine called a ‘rotoscope’ and adjusted until they seem to the patient to fuse into one.

1944 Life 10 Apr. 81/1 (caption) Rotoscope has movable tubes through which the child looks at pictures.

1996 NeuroRehabilitation 6 190/1 In instruments such as the stereoscope..and rotoscope, two targets are presented and are seen uniquely by each eye, due to the presence of a midline septum.

1938 N.Y. Times 4 Sept. x3/8 The prince and princess of Disney's fable were drawn by means of a rotoscope, by which real humans were photographed going through the required action.

1956 Billboard 29 Sept. 20/1 Of the three existing ways to accomplish this, rotoscope, rear projection and lens cutouts, he chose the second as being most original and least costly.

1987 N. Spinrad Little Heroes 37 But of course no one was about to use her bod even as rotoscope input for a vid track!

2009 Australian (Nexis) 27 Jan. (Review section) 32 Chainsaw doesn't drag its heels through an entire feature, and the rotoscope gets time off here and there. Most of the animals and birds were drawn freehand, for example.

1960 Broadcasting 6 June 18/2 We did a commercial on a special soap... It originally was slated as a job for film, since it called for rotoscoping animation over live action.

1965 R. Fielding Technique Special Effects Cinematogr. viii. 202 The shot of masonry is rotoscoped and a set of matte tracings is prepared.

1980 Cinema Jrnl. 20 56 Snow White's movements were rotoscoped, giving her form some relationship to an actual female body.

1993 Pop. Mech. July 35/1 Sony has rotoscoped a real actor for the character of Harker.

2006 J. Foster After Effects & Photoshop (ed. 2) vi. 133 Once you have rotoscoped both of the sequences and converted them back into QuickTime movies, you can import them back into After Effects to complete the blue-screen footage.