John Arthur Roebuck Rudge
{{Short description|British scientific inventor (1837–1903)}}
File:John_Arthur_Roebuck_Rudge.jpg
John Arthur Roebuck Rudge (26 July 1837 – 3 January 1903){{cite news |newspaper=Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette |date=9 January 1937 |page=10 |title=The Rudge Centenary |publisher=British Newspaper Archive }} {{subscription required}} was a British scientific instrument maker and inventor, who lived in Bath, noted for his contributions to the development of moving pictures. He collaborated with William Friese-Greene and, around 1880, he invented a device known as the Biophantic Lantern.{{cite web |url=https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp30193/john-rudge |title=John Rudge |website=sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk |publisher=Science Museum Group |access-date=8 April 2022}} This rotated seven square slides around a circular lamp housing, using a movement similar to the Maltese Cross, later found in many film projectors. The light was obscured between images via a pair of ground glass shutters. The only surviving sequence – likely the only one ever made – shows Rudge taking off his own head and putting it under his arm. The trick was carried out by Friese-Greene playing the body.{{Cite journal |last=Domankiewicz |first=Peter |date=25 November 2024 |title=William Friese-Greene & the art of collaboration (journal article) |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460654.2024.2428487 |journal=Early Popular Visual Culture |volume=22}}{{Citation|title=William Friese-Greene & The Art of Collaboration (talk)| date=24 April 2018 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_MA4LQmrYQ|language=en|access-date=2021-06-24}} [https://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/catalogues/appareils/collection/lanterne-de-projectionap-94-33.html This lantern and the slides] are now to be found in the Cinémathèque Française.
Over the following decade Rudge came up with a series of magic lantern experiments to try to recreate movement, calling all of these 'Biophantoscopes'. All employed individually posed photographs, rather than images taken with a moving picture camera, and featured changing faces.[http://www.victorian-cinema.net/rudge.htm Who's Who of Victorian Cinema]