Eadweard Muybridge -- Later Years

The Palo Alto Experiments

Muybridge lined twelve still cameras along a horsetrack, and draped a long sheet marked with numbered vertical lines on the opposite side of the track, across from the cameras. Wires stretched across the track, attached to each camera.
On Muybridge's signal, a racehorse sped down the track. Its sulky broke the wires in sequence, tripping the camera shutters in rapid succession.
The dozen photos that resulted depicted the horse's movements precisely. Even the spokes of the sulky's wheels were visible, frozen in time. Eadweard Muybridge had captured motion.
Scientists and artists were astounded by the images taken at Leland Stanford's Palo Alto farm. Muybridge was hailed internationally for his startling achievement. Inspired, Muybridge captured other images of animals in motion, refined his techniques, and patented his method.

The Zoopraxiscope

Less than two years later, the photographer combined motion toys and the magic lantern to create one of the first movie machines. Muybridge's device spun a disk in front of a lamp, which projected the moving (albeit repetitive) images. He christened it the zoopraxiscope.

Muybridge used his zoopraxiscope to thrill lecture audiences. Although it was one among many motion picture devices of the time, it remained the only commercially-demonstrated movie machine for more than a decade. It was also a lot of fun.

Taking the Show on the Road

Muybridge took his success -- and his inventions -- to Paris and London, where he lectured to royalty, academics, and artists. Audiences were charmed by the stately inventor's humor and astonished by his moving images. The glory proved short-lived.
While Muybridge was abroad, his patron Leland Stanford published The Horse in Motion. The book reproduced a number of MuybridgeÍs images as photolithographs, but his name did not appear on the title page. The implication was clear: Muybridge was a mere technician, a hired hand incapable of scientific analysis. Incensed, Muybridge sued -- and lost.

Four Years in Philadelphia

Left without Stanford's backing, Muybridge scrambled to find a patron. The University of Pennsylvania finally made an offer, and in 1883, Muybridge began a study of human and animal movement that remains unparalleled to this day.
Working out of an elaborate outdoor studio on campus, Muybridge used a new dry plate process, natural light, and an ingenious assortment of camera positions and devices to capture crisp images of both humans and animals, showing musculature and movement in unprecedented detail.
Muybridge tweaked Victorian prudishness by photographing many of his subjects nude. Unhappy with artists' models, he convinced students, dancers, and even society matrons to disrobe for his cameras. To contemporary sensibilities, this was shocking: his collaborator Thomas Eakins had been fired from the Academy of Fine Arts for having men pose nude in a mixed-sex drawing class. But Muybridge's work was supervised by respected academics, and his fame and reputation preceded him.
Seen today, the motion studies still seem oddly modern. Captured in an eternal present, men run, leap, box, fence, hit a baseball, somersault, even play leapfrog.... In keeping with notions of the time, women sweep, lounge, and bathe. Some photos are blatantly prurient: Muybridge shows women getting into bed, smoking, and literally jumping in the hay. Others -- like ñChickens Being Scared by a Torpedoî -- seem purely whimsical. And everyone, including Muybridge, is photographed walking.
Published in 1887, Animal Locomotion was Muybridge's magnum opus. Its eleven volumes and 781 plates cost more than $40,000 to publish, and represented thirteen years of original work. Subscribers to the series included Edison, the scientists William Thomson and Ernst Mach, and the artists Eakins, Whistler, and Rodin. Even former president Ulysses S. Grant signed up.
Acclaim and publicity notwithstanding, Animal Locomotion was not a financial success. Muybridge was compelled to make the lecture circuit once again -- to hawk subscriptions to the series.

Later Life

In his later years, Muybridge traveled and lectured widely, and wrote memoirs and overviews of his work. For the 1893 Chicago Exposition, Muybridge built the first commercial movie theatre, ñthe Zoopraxographical Hall.î Ever the showman, he cranked up his zoopraxiscope and gave daily lectures.
But other inventors had stolen his thunder: EdisonÍs Kinetoscope was all the rage. The Wizard of Menlo Park was widely hailed in the U.S. as the inventor of motion pictures.
Eadweard Muybridge returned to England in 1900. Four years later, he collapsed and died while digging a model of the Great Lakes in his garden.