A card with a picture on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image due to persistence of vision.
Persistence of vision is the eye's ability to retain an image for roughly 1/20 of a second after the object is gone. In this case, the eye continues to see the two images on either side of the thaumatrope shortly after each has disappeared. As the thaumatrope spins, the series of quick flashes is interpreted as one continuous image.
A thaumatrope could only take two images and merge them, essentially creating one still image from two.
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