A video on a postage stamp: Austria's Andreas Herzog's 1997 World Cup qualifying goal

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Austria_Lenticular.gif No, this isn’t an advert. Look closer and you’ll find this moving image to the left is exactly what you should be paying attention to. It is not a trick designed to coax you into buying something that you hadn’t previously wanted – well, unless that item is an Austrian postage stamp featuring a video of Andreas Herzog’s goal in the 1997 World Cup qualifier against Sweden.

There’s no actual moving parts involved in this stationery tech. It is in fact a process known as lenticular printing, the same as seen on the free treats given out inside cereal boxes to convince young children to hang on their parents’ sleeves until they have bought the family sized pack of Sugar Puffs that the child has no intention of eating whatsoever.

The way it works is that a camera with a lenticular lens takes a whole bunch images which it then interlaces onto one picture that comes to life as you move it. The only difference between the image on this stamp and the old cereal box nonsense is that it contains 48 frames rather than just two. As a result you get a full motion experience of Mr Herzog’s effort, albeit from three simultaneous angles.

The question is, if we used the idea over here, what events would we commemorate on a three second video stamp?

(via Boing Boing Gadgets)

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Daniel Sung
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