The University of North Texas Libraries has an excellent online exhibit about the history of Pop-Up and Movable Books. (Image here is a spread from Puss in Boots. Illustrated pop-up ed. New York: Blue Ribbon Press, 1934. Illustrated by C. Carey Cloud and Harold B. Lentz.)
From the exhibit introduction:
The first movable books actually predate the print culture. The earliest known examples of such interactive mechanisms are by Ramón Llull (c.1235-1316) of Majorca, a Catalán mystic and poet. His works contain volvelles or revolving discs, which he used to illustrate his complex philosophical search for truth. Through his logic, he divided categories of things and ideas, substances, adjectives and verbs, and knowledge and actions, into superior and inferior groups. Each group was made up of units designated by letters, which were then assigned appropriate sectors on circles of different sizes. The circles were cut out and placed one on top of one another as "a method of obtaining a higher knowledge of all things by simple mechanical means (the turning of circles) in the shortest time…"
