Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is well known for his work on animation locomotion which used multiple cameras and camera equipment to capture movement. He is also known for his zoopraxiscope, a device used to project motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.

Eadweard Muybridge was asked to help the former Governor of California Leland Stanford to prove that when a horse galloped all four of the horses hooves actually left the floor at the same time. Most paintings of horses prior to this were painted with the front legs extended forwards and the rear legs extended rearwards. Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. Later a clockwork device was used. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a Zoöpractiscope. This, in fact became an intermediate stage towards motion pictures or cinematography. This series of photos stands as one of the earliest forms of videography.