Eadweard Muybridge

“ Muybridge showed that many of our best artists have been in the habit of depicting animals in positions which they never assume in nature."—Chambers' Edinburgh Journal.
"The large school-room (Clifton College) was crowded. The head master presided. Loud applause and frequent laughter greeted the life-sized photographs from nature, which by a rapid revolution of the Zoopraxiscope, showed among other actions, the ambling of an elephant, the gallop of a race-horse, the somersault of a gymnast and the flight of a bird."—Bristol Mercury. ”

“ While the philosopher was exhausting his endeavours to expound the laws that control, and the elements that effect the movements associated with animal life, the artist, with a few exceptions, seems to have been content with the observations of his earliest predecessors in design, and to have accepted as authentic without further inquiry, the pictorial and sculptural representations of moving animals bequeathed from the remote ages of tradition. ”

“ The rack, sometimes miscalled the "pace," is a method of quadrupedal locomotion in which two lateral feet with nearly synchronous action are placed upon and lifted from the ground alternately with the other laterals, the body of the animal being in the intervals entirely without support. The distance which the propelling feet hurl the animal through the air depends, as with other movements, upon a variety of circumstances; at a high rate of speed the distance will be about one-half the total length of the stride. Upon landing, a hind foot usually precedes its lateral fore. ”

“ If the stride of a trotting horse is divided into two portions, representing the comparative distances traversed by the aggregate of the body while the feet are in contact with, and while they are entirely clear of, the ground, the relative measurements will be found to vary very greatly, they being contingent upon length of limb, weight, speed, and other circumstances.
Heavily built horses will sometimes merely drag the feet just above the surface, but, in every instance of a trot, the weight of the body is really unsupported twice during each stride. ”

“ It is also highly probable that these photographic investigations—which were executed with wet collodion plates, with exposures not exceeding in some instances the one five-thousandth part of a second—will dispel many popular illusions as to the gait of a horse, and that future and more exhaustive experiments, with the advantages of recent chemical discoveries, will completely unveil to the artist all the visible muscular action of men and animals during their most rapid movements.... ”

“ When the body of an animal is being carried forward with uniform motion, the limbs in their relations to it have alternately a progressive and a retrogressive action, their various portions accelerating in comparative speed and repose as they extend downwards to the feet, which are subjected to successive changes from a condition of absolute rest, to a varying increased velocity in comparison with that of the body. ”

“ A STRIDE is an act of progressive animal motion, which, for its completion, requires all of the supporting members of the body, in the exercise of their proper functions, to be consecutively and regularly thrust in the direction of the movement until they hold the same relative positions in respect to each other as they did at the commencement of the notation. In the bipedal walk or run a step is one-half of a stride or full round movement. ”

“ Assuming that during a stride of the canter a horse springs into the air from a left fore foot, the right hind foot will first reach the ground; the two fore legs will at this time be flexed under the body, the right being the first landed, and for a brief period of time the support will devolve upon the laterals. The right fore foot is rapidly followed by the left hind. During a very slow canter the other fore foot will sometimes be landed in advance of the lifting of its diagonal, and the curious phase presented of all of the feet being in contact with the ground at the same instant. ”

“ By some observers the perfect trot is described as an absolutely synchronous movement of the diagonal feet. This simultaneous action may be considered desirable, but it probably never occurs.
Sometimes the fore foot will be raised before the diagonal hind foot, sometimes afterwards; but in either instance, the foot raised first will strike the ground first; repeated experiments with many racing and other trotting horses confirmed this want of simultaneity. ”

“ It is impossible within its limits to trace the history of the art of delineating animals in motion, or to illustrate it with examples of the truthful impressions of the primitive Artists, or of the imaginative and erroneous conceptions of many of those of modern times. ”

“ The action of no single limb can be availed of for artistic purposes without a knowledge of the synchronous action of the other limbs; [Pg 2] and to the extreme difficulty, almost impossibility, of the mind being capable of appreciating the simultaneous motion of the four limbs of an animal, even in the slower movements, may be attributed the innumerable errors into which investigators by observation have been betrayed. ”

“ With this apparatus, horse-races are reproduced with such fidelity that the individual characteristics of the motion of every animal can readily be seen; flocks of birds fly across the screen with every movement of their wings clearly perceptible; two gladiators contend for victory with an energy which would cause the arena to resound with wild applause, athletes turn somersaults, and other actions by men, women and children, horses, dogs, cats and wild animals, such as running, dancing, jumping, trotting and kicking, are illustrated in the same manner. ”

“ The action of a fast-trotting horse while drawing a vehicle is very different from his action under the saddle; in the latter case, the hind legs are kept thrust back for a longer period, and their final forward movement is much more rapid. ”

“ The ingenious gentlemen who are persistently endeavoring to overcome the obstacles in the construction of an apparatus for aerial navigation, will perhaps some day be awakened by the fact that the only successful method of propulsion will be found in the action of the wing of an insect. ”

“ When, during a gallop, the fore and hind legs are severally and consecutively thrust forwards and backwards to their fullest extent, their comparative inaction may create in the mind of the careless observer an impression of indistinct outlines ”

“ It should not be understood that the term "spring" implies that the body of the horse is greatly elevated by that action; were it so, much force would be unnecessarily expended with the result of loss of speed. The center of gravity of a horse trotting or galloping at a high rate of speed will preserve an almost strictly horizontal line, the undulations being very slight. ”

“ The employment of automatic apparatus for the purpose of obtaining a regulated succession of photographic exposures is too recent for its value to be properly understood, or to be generally used for scientific experiment; at a future time, the pathologist, the anatomist, and other explorers for hidden truths will find it indispensable for their complex investigations. ”

“ For the value of the present work to the general student of Nature and the lover of Art, no less than to the Artist and the Archæologist, the Physiologist and the Anatomist, it is with much pride and gratitude that he refers to the annexed list of some of his subscribers. ”

“ These successive foot fallings are common to all dogs when galloping, and it is worthy of note that the same rotary action in the use of the limbs is adopted in the gallop of the elk, the deer and the antelope, all of which animals, like the dog, can for a time excel the horse in speed. ”

“ Upon the completion of an electric circuit the armature is drawn towards the magnet; the end of the lever is released from its contact with the shoulder; the ring C is released from the projecting point D; the front of the endless curtain is drawn rapidly downward; the apertures meet in the center of the lens, form a gradually expanding and then contracting diaphragm, and the exposure is made. A front view of three electro-photographic exposors is seen in Figure 3. ”

“ The gait resembles the gallop in respect to its leaving the horse entirely unsupported for a varying period of time, and in the fact that the spring into the air is always effected from a fore foot, and the landing upon the diagonal hind foot ”