Zoetrope

In 1834, a man named William George invented the Zoetrope, an invention that displayed image sequences in a circular metal container, and when spun it illustrated the illusion of motion.

To interact and watch the animation you'd have to spin it to make it move and keep doing this for as long as you'd want to watch it. Today, everything is pretty much digital, we still use flips books which is similar as you flip the pages of illustrations to again, create motion. With digital animation now, we draw and using layers in photoshop for example and can export the sequence in a number of ways; as a movie which will play once through, or as a gif that will play on loop. Instead of viewing the image sequence through slots in a metal ring, we view it digitally.