Tuesday, September 12, 2006

On vertical interference in somersaults


The flying trapeze act was invented by Jules Leotard, a French gymnast at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris in 1859 but acrobats and tumblers had performed tricks on a slack rope before at 18th century fairs. Leotard's act was called La Course aux Trapèze and consisted of two separate trapezes which he would set swinging, then jump from one trapeze to the other. He later developed the act to include turning a somersault when jumping between the two trapezes.


"Might be a matter of calibration" mused Sam Renseiw thinking about the visual vertical interference, while noticing that Mr.Glavatski had a strange resemblance with Jules Leotard, whose physiognomy he only knew from dated photographs. Investigate this uncanny double by clicking here, or jump in the high set-up above. (patafilm #247, 01'31'', 6.9 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)