Jacob's ladder (toy)

Common card · No. 439734

A Jacob's ladder (also magic tablets, Chinese blocks, and klick-klack toy) is a folk toy consisting of blocks of wood held together by strings or ribbons. When the ladder is held at one end, blocks appear to cascade down the strings. This effect is a visual illusion which is the result of one block after another flipping over. It may be considered a kinetic illusion, where the blocks appear to change position when they do not. Its name Jacob's Ladder comes from the biblical ladder to heaven, mentioned in Genesis 28:12. Of unknown origin, the earliest known review of the Jacob's Ladder is an 1889 Scientific American article which tells how it is built and works: The simple toy ... is very illusive in action. When the upper block is grasped by the edges ... and turned so as to lift the second block in the series to the same height, the upper end of the second block falls into an inverted position, and appears to pass downward on the other members of the series, first upon one side of the...

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