During the period while his sight was gradually going, Plateau continued work on vision and made great contributions to the then unknown motion picture. From 1843 he had to discontinue teaching on account of total blindness but this did not stop his experiments. In 1830 Plateau published a further explanation of his wheel device in Quetelet’s Journal. In 1831 and 1832 Plateau and Michael Faraday (1791–1867), English scientist, had a written argument over certain phases of priority in observing the “wheel phenomenon” which led to the motion picture. On December 10th, 1830, Faraday, the son of a blacksmith, who attracted the attention of Sir Humphry Davy, addressed the Royal Institution of Great Britain “On the Peculiar Class of Optical Deceptions.” The paper was published in February, 1831, in the Institution’s _Journal_. Faraday, called by Tyndall, “the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen,” was attracted to the wheel phenomenon which he noted “J. M.” had discussed in 1820 and Roget in 1824. At the lead mills of Messrs. Maltsby Faraday saw cog wheels rapidly revolving one in one direction, the other in another. The optical effect was curious. He designed in his laboratory a disk machine in order to create the same illusion, noting that the effects produced were sometimes beautiful. Faraday said that the device of the revolving wheels could be spun before a mirror and interesting results observed. He did not propose the use of images or pictures. Mr. Wheatstone, Faraday said, was engaged in the general exploration of the subject and hoped soon that the results would be made public. Plateau later in the year wrote in the _Annales de Chimie et de Physique_, a scientific publication printed in Paris and edited by Guy-Lussac and Arago, that scientists both in France and England were studying the effects of two revolving wheels, one placed behind the other and each revolving at different speeds. Plateau claimed priority in these words: “Several years ago I observed those phenomena and from that conducted experiments whose results were published. My experiments attracted little attention outside the country and Mr. Faraday without doubt had no knowledge of my work.... It is because such a man as Mr. Faraday has decided that the phenomenon in question was not unworthy of his attention that I attach some merit to the honor of having observed it before him.” In the 1832 edition of the _Correspondance Mathématique et Physique_ of Quetelet, Plateau remarked (in a note dated January 20, 1833) that following the letter published in the _Annales_ of November, 1831, “He (Faraday) wrote me and recognized in a manner most flattering for me the priority of my observations.” Plateau finally concluded that Faraday had had some knowledge after all of his earlier work when the Englishman wrote his paper at the end of 1830.