People knew persistence of vision, illusions, etc. in day to day and night light viewing long before the 1600's. In my view, these everyday, taken for granted 'facts' were picked up and used by the artists and engineers, for example as camera obscurae and optical instruments, and then much more formally, as subjects of study for natural philosophers. In greater scientific circles, I have to give Newton credit for a color wheel going to white, though not explained as persistence of vision. Then we move on to "Chevalier Patrice D'Arcy (1725--1779) --- who carried out experiments on visual persistence and measured its duration with some precision ub 1765, based on a casual comment in Newton's Opticks 1704, says Nicolas Wade. Newton wrote on this much earlier than 1704, but Opticks was likely more available than 1600's articles in Transactions of The Royal Society. The lowly wagon wheel seems to be at the root of movies.