A ‘Flying Horse’ Carries Muybridge to New Adventures in America

In the 1850s, Muybridge traveled from his home in Kingston-on-Thames, England to San Francisco. He established himself as an innovative photographer, specializing in skyline panoramas — the QuickTime VRML of its day.

In California, he met the state’s former governor Leland Stanford, a railroad tycoon and avid horse breeder. Stanford asked Muybridge to settle an age-old arguement among sportsmen. Did all four hooves of a trotting horse leave the ground for an instant? Does a fast horse actually ‘fly?’

With a $40,000 grant, Muybridge set to work in Sacramento in 1872. He erected a bank of glass plate cameras triggered by strings and rubber bands, snapped by the hooves of a celebrated harness racehorse named Occident.

The resulting photo sequence was an international sensation, launching Muybridge on a European speaking tour and earning him a place in the history of photography. The Flying Horse project also sparked the movies’ first lawsuit — a bitter court battle with Stanford over who should rightfully claim credit.

Eureka!
Eadweard Muybridge had created the technology to create sequential images — and to project them.

He mounted small glass plates on a circular disc rotated between a calcium carbide ‘limelight’ and a lens, a device Muybridge called the Zoopraxiscope.

Astonished audiences saw the illusion of moving images.

The action looped repeatedly, just as it does here. It was considered nothing less than miraculous. It was the birth of motion pictures.

---

The news media reported . . .
‘Mr. Muybridge has laid the foundation of a new way of entertaining people and we predict that his magic lantern will make the round of the civilized world.’
   —Alta California
   Palo Alto, California
   May 5, 1880