Job´ber`nowl`-ism

Thomas Edison the great inventor who holds 1093 patents to his name is said to have received the idea for the Kinetoscope from an English photographer who went to meet him asking to incorporate Edison’s phonograph with his motion capturing device, which if worked would have been the first projector with video and audio. Later after five years, Edison’s Kinetoscope along with his phonograph recorded a scene for the first time in the history to be projected.

That English photographer was who used multiple cameras and another device which created to project movement of animals was Eadweard J. Muybridge. Tate Britain had conducted an exhibition during September 2010 and January 2011 showcasing Muybridge’s works.

Muybridge, the man who proved that a horse can fly (Tate Britain, 2010) is widely considered to be the Father of motion pictures. In 1872, Muybridge was hired by a race horse owner to prove scientifically that all four legs of a running horse would be in the air at some certain point of time. People did not believe this until Muybridge captured the running motion of a horse using a series of cameras and played it back to them. He arranged 24 cameras using glass plate and were separated by 27 inches and were placed just next to the race track. He arranged the cameras to trigger as the horse passed by each camera using a string. All the pictures when continuously played back created an illusion of moving horse and it proved that all four legs will stay on air at some certain point of time.

Even though there many splendid works including ‘study of wrestlers’ and ‘movement of a horse’ were portrayed in the Tate Britain exhibition, the highlights were the panoramic photograph of San Francisco and a working Zoopraxiscope. Zoopraxiscope is a device that Muybridge invented that would create an illusion of motion when images were printed on glass disk and are manually rotated. The panoramic photograph of San Francisco is 17 feet long. He took approximately five and half hours to shoot the picture. Riggins (2008) writes that Muybridge shot picture from a place that was 381 feet above the ground from where he was able to get the full view of the city. The picture gives an idea of how San Francisco was before the 1906 earthquake.



The personal life of Muybridge was much unknown to the world. I was not aware that Muybridge was conducted for the murder of his wife’s lover until i visited the exhibition at Tate Britain. Muybridge’s wife named Flora was only half his age. She had a relation with an army man whenever Muybridge was not at home. According to ‘The Virtual Victorian’(2010) when Muybridge came to know about the relation, he went straight to the lover and said: "Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here is the answer to the letter you sent my wife" and fired a bullet at him. Later, when Flora gave birth to baby boy, ‘the father of motion pictures’ denied the fatherhood of that child.

The exhibition has revealed the unveiled about Eadweard Muybridge.