Eadweard J. Muybridge (April 9, 1830 – May 8, 1904) was an English photographer, known primarily for his early use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today.
Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of Yosemite and San Francisco. He quickly became famous for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West.
About the video:
In 1872, former Governor of California Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether all four of a horse’s hooves left the ground at the same time during a gallop.
Muybridge developed a scheme for instantaneous motion picture capture. Muybridge’s technology involved chemical formulas for photographic processing and an electrical trigger created by the chief engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, John D. Isaacs. It is important to underscore Muybridge’s collaboration with John D. Isaacs. The design for the trigger to set off each camera was what eluded Muybridge for so long and without Isaacs’ help, Muybridge’s contraption would never have come into existence.
In 1877, Muybridge settled Stanford’s question with a single photographic negative showing Stanford’s racehorse Occident airborne in the midst of a gallop. This negative was lost, but it survives through woodcuts made at the time.
A set of Muybridge’s photos in motion:
Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion
American bison (”buffalo”) galloping
