Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) began his career as a landscape photographer, traveling in a carriage-turned-darkroom he named “Helios’ Flying Studio.” Muybridge is best known, however, for his experimentation with motion photography. He devised a method of taking many photographs of a moving subject in rapid succession. These images were then projected in sequence using a lantern called a zoopraxiscope. His work was an early predecessor of
modern motion pictures.

In 1872, Muybridge was hired by former Governor and railroad magnate Leland Stanford to analyze the gait of a galloping horse using his photographic techniques. Muybridge continued to conduct his moving image experiments throughout the 1880s, frequently lecturing and demonstrating his methods. He returned to his native England upon his retirement in 1894.