International photographer (Feb-Dec 1929)

Eighteen T h INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER June, 1929 zj&uy bridge ^emi-Qentennial F Leland Stanford had not been so sure he was right about the way a horse moves his legs, the raoii*<^M tion pictures might have /' been a good many years later in arriving. That conviction on the part of the founder of Stanford University plus the skill of a pioneer photographer resulted in the first series of consecutive instantaneous pictures made fifty years ago on Stanford's stock farm at Palo Alto. Considering the state of photography at the time the achievement was remarkable. Although the Swedish chemist Scheels disclosed the action of the sun's rays on chloride of silver in 1772, a hundred years later Stanford and the photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge who worked with him had to dip their plates every few minutes. It was not until 1882 that they had usable dry plates. In contrast with the plates used, the camera itself was well developed. Many of the Stanford Muybridge experiments were made with f:4.0 lenses. To place credit where it is due and trace the history of the beginnings which have developed into the motion picture industry of today Walter R. Miles, professor of Experimental Psychology at Stanford University recently made a thorough research. Parts of this were incorporated in two lectures delivered at the recent ceremony sponsored jointly by Stanford University and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to commemorate the semicentennial of the Stanford experiments. Material in this article is used through the courtesy of Professor Miles and the Academy. — Note by Don Gledhill, of the Academy of M. P. Arts and Sciences. For us today to photograph a strip of motion pictures is about as easy as to scratch a match. For those of yesterday to make a photograph of any kind was worth a days work. If you wanted to take a picture of a cow in a pasture field you practically had to go out as a camping expedition,— you had to take a tent and a bath tub — the tent for a dark room and the tub to dip your plates freshly in the silver solution. The wet collodion process was a rather messy affair. The plates had to be dipped just before they were exposed and in those cases where the photographer desired to take still pictures of animals or of children, he sometimes had to dip his plates more than once due to the delay between dipping and getting a still period for exposure. Landscapes and human adults lent themselves readily to photographic _____ —by WALTER R. MILES Professor of Experimental Psychology, Stanford University requirements. Daguerre first made photography a commercial success and shops were opened in London about 1840. Most excellent photographs were made by O. D. Hill in London in 1845. Among these were portraits of Browning, Tennyson and Darwin. Fox Talbot's view of Laycock Abbey was produced in 1839 or at least it was shown to the Royal Society that year, though he started his experiment in 1834, and this is thought to have ben the first landscape photograph. Very naturally in dealing with the landscape and particularly with human portraiture the problem of exposure time had to be considered. These early photographers were asking each other the question and experimenting as to how short the exposure can be? How can it be made shorter and suitable to record the rapidly changing scene? Notice please that man's perception of space and form relations is much more exact and minute than is his appreciation of time intervals. The retina is spread out, a broad expanse of minute recepters and can thus register simultaneously straight lines, curved lines and almost an infinite number of points. The Babylonians divided the special circle into 1,269,000 parts, that is, 360 times 60 minutes, times 60 seconds. We have no comparable division of time into such tiny units that are, or can be, consciously appreciated. Man has not the developed nervous mechanism for apprehending time that he has for apprehending space. It is natural that we give first and foremost attention to the space relations and only later turn to the time relations. This, I think, is characteristic in every branch of science and in every major human activity. Instantaneous photography like most things did not have an instantaneous beginning. I will cite one historical item which seems to me of interest on the topic. In August 1851 the following note was published in the Philosophy Magazine, p. 154. Note on instantaneous photographic images, by H. F. Talbot, Esq., F.R.S. etc. "Having recently met with a photographic process of great sensibility, I was desirous of trying whether it was possible to obtain a truly instantaneous representation of an object in motion. The experiment was conducted in the following manner. A printed paper was fixed to a circular disc, which was then made to revolve on its axis as rapidly as possible. When it had attained its greatest velocity, an electric battery, kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Faraday, was discharged in front of the disc, lighting it up with a momentary flash. A camera con taining a very sensitive plate of glass had been placed in a suitable position, and on opening this after the discharge an image was found of a portion of the words printed on the paper. They were perfectly well-defined and wholly unaffected by the motion of the disc. As I am not aware that this experiment has ever succeeded, or indeed been tried, previously, I have thought it encumbent on me to lay an early account of it before the Royal Society." June 12, 1851, W. H. Fox Talbot took out a British patent for making instantaneous pictures of moving objects by the light of an electric battery. Thus the notion of an extremely brief exposure as a technical possibility was squarely before the scientific world in 1851. As a practical matter, however, the photographers of the sixties and seventies found that with ordinary daylight the exposure could be as short as 1-10 or 1-12 second. This was the status when Mr. Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer born in England in 1830, was working in San Francisco in 1872. Today the cameraman speaks of "shooting a scene." The camera operator whose object has been to deal with motion has always occupied this role of the marksman. He had to train himself to pull the trigger when everything was in line. This is not so easy if you are trying to line up with a winning race horse. The first attempts by Mr. Muybridge in Sacramento were made with a single camera and he pulled the trigger when his eye said "now" to his hand. He had a double technical problem. The first to get the horse on the plate, second, to get him in that phase of leg and foot position which Leland Stanford knew about and wanted to have registered. Their results, like most research findings, only whetted their interest to pursue the problem further. Governor Stanford changed his residence from Sacramento to Palo Alto Farm in 1876. The next year he was ready and interested in having further trials made. They secured a picture of Occident representing him with all feet clear of the ground. This picture was enlarged and retouched and widely distributed. Mr. Muybridge was authorized to procure further apparatus and to arrange a building near the practice track. The building was to house the cameras arranged in a line, and was to provide the requisite "tent" and "bath tub." Preparations were completed in 1878 when they had twelve cameras in place, arranged at intervals of twenty-one inches and fitted with double shutters. We might describe