A history of the movies (1931)

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4 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES petus to the efforts to combine the magic lantern, or some of its principles, and photographic glass plates to obtain motion. From about 1850 to 1890, the urge for pictures in motion was so definite that many men in America and Europe — a few of them scientists, others artists, and others laymen — tinkered away at the problem; but an incident which greatly stimulated research came not from these specialists and amateurs, but from a disagreement among sportsmen as to the movement of a horse's legs. Leland Stanford, capitalist and one-time governor of California, declared that a thoroughbred at full gallop lifts all four feet from the ground. Other horsemen and various anatomists, sculptors and painters disagreed with him, and Stanford, conceiving the idea of using the camera to establish the facts, employed a photographer named Eadweard Muybridge to do the work. Many photographs were taken in a series of experiments extending over several years, but the results were unsatisfactory until Stanford engaged an engineer, John D. Isaacs, who placed several cameras in a row and arranged an electrical device to open the shutter of each as the horse ran past. Thus a series of photographs was obtained, each picture showing the horse in a different position. The photographs proved that Stanford was right — the racing horse does lift all four feet from the ground. Stanford was pleased. He had spent several years and much money in the experiments, but was more than repaid by the interest aroused by his photographs in America and Europe. In 1882, he published a book of the pictures, with analytical and descriptive text by J. D. B. Stillman. The Stanford book and its revolutionary illustrations proved that motion could be photographed. Several inventors soon presented exhibitions of photographs on glass plates, using various stages of motion in a series of acts, and then arranging the plates so that an illusion of motion was created. One man photographed scenes of little plays on lantern slides, and by slipping one slide after another on the rack of a stereopticon produced a screen show in which there was an illusion of figures