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In the nineteenth century, the kaleidoscope, the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, the stereoscope, and other optical toys were standard accessories of a middle-class childhood, used both at home and at school. In Playful Visions, Meredith Bak argues that the optical toys of the nineteenth century were the "new media" of their era. Bak shows that optical toys--which produced visual effects ranging from a moving image to the illusion of depth--established and reinforced a new understanding of vision as an interpretive process.