arts, ideas & societyThe Public Domain Review1882 · London, UK

Muybridge's 1882 London lecture showed how animals move, using his zoopraxiscope

the gist

In March 1882 the photographer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture at the Royal Institution in London, with projected images to show how animals move. He had earlier used a row of cameras triggered by tripwires to photograph horses in fast motion, settling a long-running question about whether all four hooves leave the ground at once in a gallop. His zoopraxiscope projected sequences of painted or photographed frames on a rotating disc, so that the pictures appeared to move. The audience included members of the Royal Family, including the future King Edward VII. The device is often seen as a forerunner of the movie projector, and Muybridge's sequences showed motion that the human eye could not catch.

how it works

Muybridge placed a row of cameras along a track, each triggered by a tripwire as the subject passed, capturing a series of frames a fraction of a second apart. The zoopraxiscope then projected these drawn or photographed images in rapid sequence through a rotating disc, and the brain fuses the sequence into smooth movement.

so what

Muybridge's work turned photography into a way of studying movement, and it is a direct ancestor of cinema. It also settled a scientific argument about animal motion that artists and scientists had argued over for generations.

the bigger pattern

Muybridge's sequences were an early case of photography changing how people understood the physical world, much as slow-motion and high-speed cameras later did. The same principle of rapid frames producing apparent motion underlies the phenakistoscope and every later film projector.

more on this

background

Eadweard Muybridge ( ED-wərd MY-brij; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection.

He adopted the first name "Eadweard" as the original Anglo-Saxon form of "Edward", and the surname "Muybridge", believing it to be similarly archaic. A photographer in the 19th century American West, he photographed Yosemite, San Francisco, the newly acquired Alaskan Territory, subjects involved in the Modoc War, and lighthouses on the West Coast. He also made his early moving picture studies in California.

From Wikipedia: Eadweard Muybridge (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗ · text CC BY-SA 4.0

key facts

Born
9 April 1830
Died
8 May 1904
Known as
photographer, inventor

Facts: Wikidata (CC0)

Image: The Public Domain Review