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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.3
Dead Medium: Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope
From: richieb_AT_teleport.com (Rich Burroughs)
Sources: "Archaeology of the Cinema," C.W. Ceram, First
American edition, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York;
"The History of World Cinema," David Robinson, Stein and
Day, New York, 1973;
"Film Before Griffith," John L. Fell, editor, University
of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983;
"A Technological History of Motion Pictures and
Television," Raymond Fielding, editor, University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967.
(((My notes in triple parens.)))
(((Eadward Muybridge was an Englishman, originally named
Edward James Muggeridge, but it seems he changed his name
for some extra flash. In the mid 1870s he was charged
with murdering his wife's lover, according to Robinson.
I'm assuming he was acquitted, as that was near the
beginning of his experiments and I didn't see any accounts
of them being interrupted do to jail time.)))
(((Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope was basically a renamed
phenakistiscope, according to Robinson. Ceram says that
Muybridge made some improvements on the earlier device.
What seems to have set Muybridge apart was his technique
of photography.)))
C. Francis Jenkins in "Technological History of Motion
Pictures and Television":
"But it is to the persistence of Eadward Muybridge that we
are indebted for the most scientific research in motion
analysis, work which he began in 1879. His animal studies
became classics with artists. Wet plates only were then
available and he used above half a million of them in a
plurality of cameras arranged in order along a track over
which his subject was required to pass." (p.2)
Ceram:
"The story goes that a wager between the Governor of
California and one of his friends led Eadward Muybridge to
set up his series of cameras. The year was 1877, and the
point in the dispute was whether a galloping horse ever
had all four legs off the ground at the same time. To
settle the question, Muybridge stationed twenty-four
cameras side by side along a race track. Twenty-four
threads were stretched across the track, and as the
galloping horses broke these, it tripped the shutters.
(Later a clockwork device tripped the shutter.)" (page 80)
(((Photos in Ceram's book show both the arrangement of
cameras that is described, and the results. A photo of
the Zoopraxiscope (the projector) and some of the disks is
on page 124. By the way, Ceram's book is filled with
excellent photos of dead media. I highly recommend it.)))
(((Muybridge's photography was not limited to animals.)))
Burnes St. Patrick Hollyman in "Film Before Griffith":
"He (((Alexander Black))) saw Muybridge's exhibition of
moving horses and scientific studies of motion as well as
the Zoopraxiscope, which included a picture of a dancing
girl in costume." (239)
Robinson:
"Initially Muybridge's aim was to produce instantaneous
single photographs; the production of rapid series was
incidental. Over the next few years however Muybridge
produced and published innumerable series of photographs
of every kind of human or animal motion. In the early
1880's he took the step of re-synthesising (((sic))) his
analysis of motion, projecting the short cycles of
movement he had recorded by means of a projecting
phenakistiscope, which he called a zoopraxiscope." (page
14)
Robinson, again, from a footnote on that same page:
"The projected images were still not, properly speaking,
photographic: Muybridge was obliged to re-draw them onto
the glass disks he used in his projector, copying them by
hand from his photographic originals."
(((The disks were flat and circular, and loaded onto the
projector's side in a vertical position. The images ran
in succession around the edge of the disk.)))
(((Muybridge's work was to influence Etienne Marey, and
Thomas Edison. Edison developed the Kinetoscope after
viewing Muybridge's system.)))
Hollyman, again:
"On February 27, 1988, Mr. Muybridge interviewed T.A.
Edison as to the possibility of combining his
Zoapraxiscope (((sic, I have seen the name of the machine
spelled at least three different ways))) projector with
Edison's phonograph, but without result, though Mr. Edison
did exploit such a combination some years later." (page 3)
Robinson confirms this:
"Edison met Muybridge, whose zoopraxiscope evidently gave
him the idea for a machine that could record and reproduce
images as his phonograph recorded and reproduced sound.
He promptly charged his English-born laboratory head,
W.K.L. Dickson, with the task of developing something on
these lines, and issued the first of a series of caveats
designed to protect the tentative researches carried on at
his establishment at West Orange, New Jersey." (page 15)
Rich Burroughs
richieb_AT_teleport.com
http://www.teleport.com/~richieb
(((bruces remarks: the life-and-motion studies of
Eadward Muybridge are widely available in Dover reprints
of sourcebooks for artists.)))
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