April 9 – Happy Birthday, Eadweard Muybridge

nPostednon April 9, 2014

Thisnfellow was a pioneer in motion picture technology.

n
n

nIt’sna bit shocking to realize that someone born on this date in 1830ncould be involved with the movie biz, isn’t it? n

n
n

nMuybridgenwas born in England (but had some Dutch ancestors) and came to thenUnited States as a young man. He took up professional photography andnin 1868 became world famous for his photos of Yosemite. A decadenlater he began experimenting with using multiple cameras to capturenmotion—the major reason he is famous today.

n
n

Muybridge’snexperiments with using stop-motion photography with multiple camerasnin order to capture motion began in 1872 at the request of formernCalifornia Governor Leland Stanford. He set up many cameras along anracetrack to be triggered by threads as a horse passed at a gallop.n(Later, he created clockwork devices to set off camera shutters andncapture images.) With these multiple photographs of a gallopingnhorse, Muybridge could answer the hotly debated question of whether angalloping horse has all four feet off the ground during certainnmoments. (The answer is “yes.”)

Muybridge then went on to devisena zoopraxiscope to rapidly project silhouettes of the images, one after another, tongive the illusion of movement.

n
n

nOfncourse, this invention isn’t used now, but it is considered an earlynsort of movie projector.

A zoopraxiscope disc

n
n

nWhat’snin a name?

n
n

nThenmoment I read Eadweard Muybridge’s name, I wondered aboutnit—especially that unusual spelling for the quite ordinary namenEdward. It turns out, his birth name was Edward James Muggeridge.nWhile living and working in the U.S., he messed around with his lastnname, changing it to Muggridge and then Muygridge and finallynMuybridge. He also used the pseudonym Helios, which is how he signednmany of his photos. (Helios was what Muybridge used as the name ofnhis studio and as the middle name of his only son.)

n
n

nWhilentraveling around for more than a year in Central America, Muybridgenadvertised himself as Eduardo Santiago Muybridge. And after a returnnto his native England, Muybridge decided to use an Old Englishnvariation of Edward: Eadweard. (Which I think is a bit a weird. Whichnmakes me wonder—is “Eadweard” pronounced like “Edward,” ornis it pronounced “Ed – weird”?)

By the way, Muybridge’sntombstone has an error – it reads “Eadweard Maybridge.”

n
n

n
n
n

These days, many kids –
even little kids – have
access to cameras that
can make movies!

n

nLearnn more about Muybridge. Heren is a documentary called “The Weird World of Eadweard Muybridge.”

n

nFindn out how modern movie projectors work here,n and how all sorts of moving image machines work here.

n

n

n

nThingsn are of course completely different now that we have computers andn digital cameras and such! Heren is a video about how to use Photoshop to “animate” a photo.

n