One of the best known and often recounted stories about the early history of the development of Cinematography is how an eccentric photographer was hired to settle a bet involving a controversy around a galloping race horse. The twenty-four cameras that were used allegedly set the running speed standard for moving pictures to this day. The time was the 1870s and in the first phase of this famous experiment, wet plate photography, which required long exposure times, was the process available. A sensational murder trial and the development of more efficient photographic processes happened before the second phase occurred which saw a birth of the movies. The birth event of note is the successful capturing of movement through the taking of successive photographs while the object being photographed was actually in motion.
Edweard James Muybridge occupied the position of ‘Official Photographer for the US Government for the Pacific Coast.’ He was originally from England but currently settled in San Francisco. During the time when Alaska was being purchased from Russia and was being called ‘Seward’s Folly,’ Muybridge was sent to record the landscape on photographic plates. It is during this period that then governor Leland Stanford, circa 1867, made his acquaintance. Along with being governor of California, Stanford was the owner and racer of horses. It is this keen interest in the movements, the gait in particular, of racehorses that provided the incentive for perhaps the most famous experiment in the history of the Cinema.
1872, the wager was made between Governor Leland Stanford and other men named James R Keene and Fredrick MacCrellish. Reportedly, the sum of the bet reached $25,000. The action in question was as to whether or not all four of the horse’s running hooves were off of the ground at any given time. Stanford was convinced that they in fact were while the other men differed in their opinions. Merely observing the running horse could not catch the action and help in making a determination that could settle the bet. Photography was growing both as a science and as an art at this time. It seemed to be the only device available to make a determination.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, Entienne Jules Marey was researching animal locomotion and was utilizing photography in his studies. Muybridge was aware of these studies and nurtured similar interests. He seemed to be one who could tackle Stanford’s problem. However, Marey employed a wet plate system of photography. This was too slow a function to effectively freeze motion. Images using such a system could record clear and sharp pictures but could not be the tool to settle the bet. Reportedly, the quickest time that an image could be made was at a shutter speed of one twelfth of a second. This may sound quick, but a running horse registered as a blur. Muybridge tried, in vain, with a stationary camera and this wet plate system. What resulted were totally unusable images. Failing, he was on the verge of giving up and resigning the commission. Stanford, however, was determined to pursue the problem-and settle the wager.
Suddenly, on the evening of October 17, 1874, Muybridge shot and killed Major Harry Larkyn in the town of Calistoga. Major Larkyn, allegedly, had been intimate with Muybridge’s wife. The trial lasted until February 5, 1875 with an acquittal due to temporary insanity. Muybridge then ‘dropped out’ for the next five years. In the interim the development of more sensitive photographic emulsions progressed to the point where an image could be rendered at one-one thousandths of a second. Muybridge eventually returned to San Francisco to continue with his photography and to also pick up virtually where he left off with Governor Stanford’s horse movement project.
The improved faster film stocks could now allow the galloping action of the racehorse to be clearly recorded, but now the bulky equipment of the time and non-agility of the photographer prevented the decisive photo from being made. Nowadays, with lighter cameras, modern high-speed film stocks and electronic flash units, all a photographer would have to do would be to follow a subject and while moving the camera at the same rate as the subject, make the exposure. Muybridge’s camera was a large wooden unit, which stayed stationary. His instinct was not always true. These factors usually produced negative results. Hundreds of plates were made of empty space. Occasionally the horse’s mouth was viewed entering a frame while other frames showed the horse’s tail leaving. One, although not very distinctly, even revealed all four hooves off of the ground. Three more depicted other horses in differing phases of their gate. Stanford took great pride in these photos. The question of accurately capturing the horse’s movements could be pursued further.
Stanford kept these four photos at his desk and often attempted to arrange them in some logical order. They were not of the same horse and did not depict the same logical series of movements. They did give Stanford an idea. He instructed Muybridge to set up a battery of cameras and make multiple exposures in quick succession as the horse and rider raced past. He did so and added the element of strings attached to each shutter, twenty-four in all. These were then stretched across the area in front of the camera and then attached to the backdrop a few inches above the ground. This particular idea was for the horse and rider to gallop past the many arranged cameras, trip the strings and take it’s own pictures. The resultant photos did succeed to a point and definitely settled the wager, clearly showing the hooves off of the ground. Small technical problems had cropped up during the action. At times the subjects were not centered when the string triggered the shutter and the cameras tended to be jerked out of place. Also certain stages of the horse’s gait ended up seemingly out of its logical sequence. By this time the mere settling of a bet was of secondary importance. Stanford wanted to successfully capture the precise successive movements of the horse and rider. A new, higher tech apparatus and method of photography had to be developed.
Arthur Brown was the chief engineer of maintenance for the Southern Pacific Railroad, which was building and expanding upon engineering precedents. Stanford approached him and told of his experiments in photographically capturing equine locomotion. Brown had access to a staff of engineers, which were probably the finest of its kind in the world at the time. One talented engineer among its many accomplished members that could be drawn upon was a man named John D Isaacs. Not only was Isaacs an honor graduate of the University of Virginia class of ’75, he was a man with extraordinary inventiveness. He was also a photography enthusiast who took more than an active interest in the developments, problems and artistry of the art. It is this man that Brown took the problems of photographing motion to. A man like Isaacs would definitely deliver interesting positive results, to say the least. Stanford heartily approved of the choice and eagerly awaited the end products.
Instead of experimenting in the field - that is on the racetrack - Isaacs addressed the question in the laboratory. He secured the services of cameras that were capable of recording an image with a shutter speed of up to one two thousandths of a second. This in turn utilized a shutter mechanism that was operated with a rubber band with a hundred-pound pull. Since the stretched string idea not at all practical, an apparatus that could handle many triggering devices in quick succession had to be developed. Earlier, in 1856, a man named Thomas Skaife had patented a similar device in England that was close to Isaacs’ idea. The first motion recorded by Isaacs’ setup was of an old switch engine in an Oakland shopyard. Such results could easily be checked and verified because the movements of the engine were known. A few cameras were employed with a single operator working the exposures.
Remembering an article that he had read in an 1876 Scientific American magazine about a newly invented device - an electric bell, Isaacs felt that such a mechanism could somehow be used in the development of an electric photographic shutter. Instead of the unsteady use of strings stretched across the path of a galloping horse, which at times even frightened and upset the animal’s movements, he determined that the method of electrical contacts and electromagnetic devices should do the trick. The designs were made and sent to an electrical engineer in San Francisco, Paul Sieler, who constructed the mechanism. The cameras were fitted with Dalmeyer lenses.
The primary application of this setup was to capture the movements of the trotting horse being driven by a rider in a race cart, called a sulky. The metal that covered the outer rim of the wheels, before rubber tires were used, made contact with metal strips that were laid on the ground in front of a backdrop. These were connected to the electromagnetic shutters on the battery of cameras set up in the same way as in the Muybridge experiment. All this occurred on Stanford’s Palo Alto farm and was a total success. However, the return to the governor’s original aspiration and the experiments that Muybridge worked at - photographing a horse and rider in motion - resulted in the development of another apparatus.
Again electrical contacts and shutters tripped by electromagnetism were used, but the main triggering device was different. A sort of master control machine with a metal cylinder carrying projecting pins like the device found in a rotary music box was applied. In this way the pins closed the electric contacts which triggered the cameras. The horse and rider would run past the cameras while an operator would turn the rotating drum. Nothing within the view of the cameras had to make contact with anything else and successful instantaneous photographs were achieved. Now any subject could walk, run or even fly past and have its successive stages of movements captured on film. The results generated much excitement with Stanford.
The experiments continued. Batteries of five, twelve and - harking back to Muybridge’s early endeavors - twenty-four cameras were utilized. A white backdrop forty feet long was set up underneath an open shed. The cameras were set exactly twelve inches apart. Vertical lines were painted on the track extending from the cameras to the backdrop and continued to the top of the backdrop. The lines provided focal points in the photos. When the resultant prints were mounted next to each other, matching the painted lines, it appeared as one long photographic illustration. Here were twenty-four horse and riders - the same subjects - in the natural successive stages of movement. Because of the quick shutter speeds and the then available lighting facilities, the subjects registered as almost silhouettes. This proved to be sufficient. Eventually the technology improved as more and more subjects in motion were photographed. Isaacs returned to his duties at the Railroad Company while Muybridge continued with the experiments until 1881. By this time Stanford had footed a bill of around $40,000.
Muybridge essayed the role of analyzer of movement and throughout the many phases of capturing the same photographic plates he did not think to take these successive images and return them to the synthesis of movement. After recording thousands of animals, the movements of the human form were the next to be experimented with. Word of these activities spread throughout the world. Stanford, the sportsman, bragged of his prize horses and copiously displayed the phase photographs. These included the famous Occident, his most valued steed and possibly the first true moving picture star. Muybridge traveled and lectured on the subjects of stages of movements, using his ‘phase photographs’ to illustrate his words. An artist in Paris, Jean Louis Meissonier, took great interest in the work and examined the photos minutely. He inquired as to whom was the artist behind the work. Stanford naturally spoke of Muybridge. It was natural that the governor would endeavor to match the minds of two artists where such work was involved. One can only wonder how different the course of the history of cinematography would have been if an engineer had taken such an interest in the activities and was matched with Isaacs. However, it was with Meissonier, who in essence was of the same fibre as Leonardo who possessed the scientist’s passion for knowledge and experimentation while approaching the question as an artist, that the re-conversion of still images to the display of motion was born.
In 1882 Muybridge met Meissonier at a private gathering which included such guests as Steinheil, Detaille, Dr Mallez, Goupil and Alexander Dumas. The movement analysis photos were passed around and generated much interest. Meissonier discussed ways of displaying a synthesis of movement utilizing the ‘phase photos’ of Muybridge’s. The mechanical means to do this already existed - the Zoetrope. A set of horse and rider photos were transferred to transparencies and mounted in their logical order on the projecting Zoetrope machine, similar to the devices developed and displayed by Uchatius and Sellers. This occurrence was the natural next step that Emile Reynard was trying to proceed to as early as 1877. This new hybrid machine was christened the Zoopraxiscope.
A revolving glass disc was used upon which the photo transparencies were mounted while an opaque shutter/disc was mounted in front of it. The two discs rotated in opposite directions. A light source was placed behind the discs and a focusing lens was set in front. When in operation the light passed through the transparencies/photos and was broken up in a flickering action. They reached the screen as a series of successive flashing images. These flashing images were enough to fuse together and appear to be in motion, employing the phenomenon of the persistence of vision. At the time the device created a sensation and Muybridge adapted it to his lectures involving the studies of animal locomotion. For him, it was a way to fame and fortune.
Governor Stanford conceived the idea. Muybridge was contracted to solve the question the best way he could. John D Isaacs was then brought in to design the mechanisms to physically bring about results. Paul Seiler provided the gadgetry and Jean Louis Meissoniet’s fascination with the results brought forth the forerunner of the art of cinematography. With all of these talented and creative persons involved, it is mainly Muybridge who is most remembered and connected with the famous experiment. His contribution has been more as an interested and participant observer who made the smallest contribution. Enjoying his subsequent fame, he continued to photograph and display animal and human locomotion. Eventually a single lensed apparatus was developed, by yet another innovator, and used exclusively. Subjects were photographed within a single frame as this stationary camera was utilized.
In his travels he made the acquaintance of Marey, the strong influence of his earliest experiments. Marey’s comment on the movement photographs was that the subjects seemed to be holding still with the ground moving past them. He himself set about to continue within the same direction and develop a single lensed camera capable of many rapid exposures. By 1882 he was successfully producing his Chronophotographs - multiple images (his own ‘phase photographs’) on single plates. Here the inspirer becomes inspired.
By invitation, Muybridge went on to the University of Pennsylvania and continued his work in animal locomotion. Among his many subjects now was the university tract team. At a gathering of representatives of the Franklin Institute, he met Coleman Sellers and Henry Renno Heyl. It was during this period, in 1887, that the 11 volume Animal Locomotion; An Electro Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements was published, containing thousands of plates. The written text that accompanies it is filled with references to the original Stanford experiment - claiming responsibility for solving the question solely by himself - and triumphant lectures about his work before groups such as the Royal Institute of Great Britain. Names mentioned among those in attendance at these lectures are Aldos Huxley, William Gladstone, Alfred Lord Tennyson as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales. He did, however, manage to squeeze in mentions of Meissoniet and the Zoopraxiscope.
Also during this University of Pennsylvania period - April 1882 - he paid a visit to Thomas Edison in New Jersey. There he reportedly discussed the possibility of combining the Zoopraxiscope with the phonograph as ‘talking pictures.’ However, a statement by Edison at the time which confirmed the visit, denied the Zoopraxiscope/phonograph link. Yet it wasn’t long after that Edison did indeed experiment with combining sound with the moving image with a Cinematograph device of his own. Evidently Muybridge desired to be a name among as many contemporary notables as he could encounter.
His tenure at the university concluded in 1893. This year also saw an exhibit of his work at the Zoopraxigraphical Hall at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Along with a display of his many ‘phase photographs’ was a demonstration of the Zoopraxiscope (naturally). The device that was displayed had not progressed beyond Meissoniet’s Projecting Praxanosope from ten years earlier. The experimenting and furthering of the art of cinematography was advancing at this time through others copying, building upon and in turn producing improved machines. In this time period Muybridge had done nothing in the way of advancement.
The first printing of another publication, The Human Figure in Motion, appeared in 1902. This work displayed many models photographed in many phases from a variety of angles. Scores of original plates from this volume, along with many from his previous works, are on permanent display in places like the Eastman House in Rochester, NY and London’s South Kensington Museum. Subsequent editions of his books are yet available yet serving as valuable references for artists.
Muybridge retired to Kensington-on-Thames and died in 1904 at the age of 74. John D Isaacs was not to work on any other device involved with the development of cinematography. Among his many other contributions were railway ferry car designs, bridge designs, conservation techniques and creosoteing processing techniques. He was in retirement in Cape Cod when author/historian Terry Ramsaye tracked him down. He made note of his contributions for his book, A Million and One Nights, a historical survey of the earliest days of the Cinema.