#muybridge

150 years ago this year, the work started to solve a question that bothered lots of people just a little, but one person entirely too much: Does a horse lift all four hooves off the ground in a full gallop?

The man with too much focus on this issue was Leland Stanford, former governor of California, founder of Stanford University, and horse overenthusiast. I'm not getting into a "human eye can only see 30 FPS" thing, but it's hard to tell with the naked eye exactly how a horse is moving its legs when running as fast as possible. Stanford insisted that everyone illustrating horses running was doing it wrong, and was going to prove it.

I'm not exaggerating when I say how much this bothered Stanford. The project ended up taking several years and $50,000 in 1870s money, which works out to about $1.2 million today. He really, really wanted to know what his racehorses were doing.

He contracted with early photographer Eadweard Muybridge, a similarly weird character. Eadweard's was named "Edward" but changed it to the Old English for... some reason. He had a lot of other interesting experiences. Look it up.

Well, the problem with figuring out the horse thing is that it was the 1870s. We're still close to the era where you had to sit very still for a photo, and horses in a gallop aren't good at doing that. Even a quick image in good conditions took fifteen seconds to a minute to expose properly. Muybridge became the world's expert on high-speed photography. He was able to get at least blurry silhouettes at first, but it wasn't good enough for Stanford. He wanted a video.

This was an interesting request at a time when video photography didn't exist either. Technically, it would be "chronophotography", photography that includes the passage of time. Other attempts at chronophotography included slow-moving subjects and perfect conditions. A horse wasn't that.

Muybridge was distracted for a bit when he went on trial for murder (he did it), but he got back to the horse thing. The horse had to be trained to walk on white sheets to create contrast for the camera. Muybridge invented a new camera system with springs that would keep the shutter time extremely short, 1/500th of a second. Still not good enough for Stanford.

Muybridge decided it was time to go all-out by 1878. Twelve separate cameras in a line. A series of wires strung across the track, each connected to one of the cameras. When the horse tripped a wire, its corresponding camera took a photo. Hey, it's basically the same method used for the bullet time in The Matrix!

It was a complete success. Muybridge captured the full motion of a horse, and Stanford got what he wanted: An image of a horse with all four legs fully off the ground while moving. Worth it, I guess? The Horse in Motion is considered a pivotal moment in film technology. Muybridge didn't stop there and continued to be a pioneer in camera technology, capturing 360 degree panoramas and many studies of motion on film.

Postnote: The photo series proved controversial because many artists didn't really like being told they were doing horses wrong. Sculpting master Auguste Rodin claimed his sculptures were still more accurate than the photos, because his sculptures depicted what a human saw, not this technology. Too bad Rodin, still got the legs pointing the wrong way. Edgar Degas and Thomas Eakins adjusted their styles to match real life.