[Applause] [Music] when Eadweard Muybridge began photography was a relatively new medium the pioneering photographers of his time had to essentially invent their own cameras and their own chemistry Muybridge began his career making pictures of Yosemite taking his bulky camera and portable darkroom through the valleys rough terrain to the high peaks where he could capture the landscapes dramatic heights and plunging chasms to achieve the shots he wanted he took his camera out to precipices where his assistants wouldn't dare follow at this time a controversy prevailed among experienced horsemen as to whether all the feet of a trotting horse were clear of the ground in the same instant to settle the debate the railroad magnate leland stanford hired Muybridge to photograph his prized racehorses Occident at a trot Muybridge constructed a track specifically for the purpose multiple cameras were lined up each connected to a wire stretched across the track as the horse hit each wire a camera was triggered to capture an instant in time horses on merry-go-rounds and an academic painting had long been represented with all feet off the ground stretched out in front and back boy bridges pictures proved something else that the feet do leave the ground at once but when they're under the horse's body these photos caused a great sensation Mison yay a celebrated painter of horses is said to have wept when he saw Muybridge's photographs it was the first time that such rapid motion could be seen like this thin slices of time quicker than anything the human eye could perceive Muybridge experimented with the optical gadgets of the time the zoetrope Samet rope and phenakistoscope and he created something he called the ZOA praxis scope a precursor to cinema it showed his still images in rapid sequence reanimating the still photos and cast the image on a wall some would say that the only thing lacking was the sound of the hooves pounding the ground or they would have believed that horses were really running through the room his work required him to travel extensively when he'd been away from San Francisco for a time he returned to find that his wife flora had been conducting an affair with the local theater critic Harry larkyns stricken Muybridge got on a ferry went to Calistoga where the lover was hiding and shot Larkins dead he was put on trial for murder if found guilty he would go to the gallows his attorney mounted an imaginative defense with friends and associates offering examples of Muybridge is benign madness the attorney introduced pictures from Yosemite showing Muybridge perched at a precarious height as evidence of the photographer's questionable mental state the jury pronounced Eadweard Muybridge not guilty and not mad he would live to create hundreds more of the motion studies of people performing various tasks and movements of horses and other animals his innovations in photographic technology formed the very foundation of cinema every movie you see today and every animation owes something to the legacy of Eadweard Muybridge [Music]