Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine, Vol. 2 I, No. 4, pp. 140- 142

NOTABLE NAMES IN MEDICAL ILLUSTRATION

Eadweard James Muybridge 1830-1904 PETER FULLER

Eadweard Muybridge is often described as the ‘Father of the motion picture’. The methods he pioneered in photograph- ing the motion of animals and human beings in the 1800s are still closely followed today, albeit with the help of modem technology.

He was born Edward James Muggeridge in Kingston-on- Thames in 1830. In 185 I he changed his name to Eadweard and went to America to make his career, firstly in New York and later in San Francisco as a literary agent and bookseller. There he changed his name to Muygridge then Muybridge.

In 1860 he was injured in a stagecoach accident on his way to get a boat to England. Recovering in Kingston he leamt about photography and in 1886 returned to San Francisco as a professional photographer. He quickly established a reputation for high quality photography. Under the name of ‘Helios’ he set up a ‘flying’ laboratory in a

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Figure 2 Muybridge twin shutter camera (artists impres- sion): A-shutters; B-camera; (and D-slotted plates mov- ing in opposition; €-electromagnet released by switch G, closed when horse breasted threads

wagon and undertook stereophotography for a variety of commissions.

In 1882 Leland Stanford, a former Governor of California and a keen horse owner, enlisted Muybridge’s help. He wished to settle an argument as to whether a trotting horse pulling a sulky (a small carriage) ever had all four feet off the ground simultaneously. Initial single photographs were unsuccessful due to the slow speed of the wet collodion process then in use and the need for short exposures to freeze the action. However, in 1874 using an improved shutter and a silhouette arrangement he obtained frames which clearly showed all four feet of a horse clear of the ground.

Later in 1874 tragedy arrived in his personal life. Muybridge shot and killed his wife’s lover by whom she had had a child. He was tried and acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide. Soon after his wife became ill and died. Shattered, Muybridge went on an extended trip to South America to try to readjust. After his return he had developed a new camera and improved the quality of his plates. The camera used two slit shutters driven by springs in opposite directions. As the slits crossed each other they allowed a very short exposure to the camera plate (Figure 2). In 1877 using this system he took much improved pictures of the horse ‘Occident’ which were widely publicised.

In 1878, once more sponsored by Stanford, he built an open air track studio especially for motion studies at Palo Alto (Figure 3 ) . A shed alongside the track contained twelve Cam~aS in line, which were exposed consecUtivelY, the shutters being triggered by strings struck by the horses as

Figure 1 Eadweard James Muybridge, 7830-7904 (repro- duced by kind permission of the Curator of the Kingston- on-Thames Museum, UK they passed.

0140-5 I 1 X/98/040140-03 0 1998 fnsrirure of Medical lllustralors

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Notable Names 14 1

Figure 3 The studio track at Palo Alto, 1878 (artists impression)

These sequence pictures were very successful and were reproduced in book form. In 1879 the cameras were increased to 24 and a clockwork mechanism was used to trigger the cameras eliminating the external strings.

In 1879 he built a machine called the ‘Zoopraxiscope’ to project his pictures and produce a moving image. The sequential pictures were reproduced around the circum- ference of a glass disk which rotated in front of a collimated light source. The images were shuttered by a synchronised rotating multi-slit disk and projected onto a screen allowing a brief exposure for each. This, combined with persistence of vision, gave the illusion of a moving picture.

In 1881 Muybridge returned to Europe and lectured in many locations including the Royal Society in London. He

met the French photographer Marey and worked with him using the new sensitive gelatine dry plates.

Back in America he unsuccessfully sued Stanford for allowing his work to be published by Dr Stillman without giving Muybridge due credit.

In 1883, a Committee led by the painter Thomas Larkin sponsored Muybridge to continue his research using the grounds of the Veterinary Hall in the University of Pennsylvania. The new studio had an enlarged track, dry plate cameras and portable multi-camera modules which were synchronised with the main cameras and allowed views from many angles and positions. Intensive work followed until 1885 during which time some 100000 photographs of birds, animals and human beings were taken. Some of the

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Figure 4 The horse ’Occident‘ pulling a Sulky, 7877 (reproduced by kind permission of the Curator of the Kingston-on- Thames Museum, UKI

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142 Notable Names

experiments were involved with studies, for the associated hospital, of people with disabilities caused by accident or disease to assist diagnosis and treatment.

Following this period Muybridge lectured and published his work in the USA and Europe, including an exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

He returned to England to stay in 1896 and settled again in Kingston where he continued to publish and collate his previous work. He died in 1904 at Kingston after a life of achievement. He had carried out the first photographic analysis of motion and projected the first moving pictures of that work. Modem physiological motion studies are all based on his pioneering principles.

Bibliography

Coe B. Muybridge and the Chrunographers. London: Museum of

Eadweard Muybridge of Kingston upon Thames. Kingston the Moving Image, 1992.

Museum and Heritage Centre, 1984.

Haas R. Muybridge, Man in Motion. University of California Press, 1976.

Hendricks G. Eadweard Muybridge, The Father of the Motion Picture. Secker and Warburg, 1975.

MacDonnell K. Eadweard Muybridge, The Man who invented the Moving Picture. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972.

Muybridge E. Animal Locomotion, An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co., 1887.

Thomas D. Eadweard Muybridge in: Two Victorian Photogra- phers. British Journal of Photography Annual 1967, p. 16.

Other books authored by Muybridge

The Human Figure in Motion; an Electrophotographic Investiga- tion of Consecutive Phases of Muscular Actions. London: Chapman and Hall, 1901. Reprint 1955 New York: Dover Publications.

Animals in Motion. London: Chapman and Hall, 1899. Reprint 1957 New York: Dover Publications.

Descriptive Zoopraxography or the Science of Animal Locomotion Made Popular. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1893.

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