THE SCIENCE OF ANIMAL LOCOMOTION (ZOOPRAXOGRAPHY)

AN ELECTRO-PHOTOGRAPHIC INVESTIGATION OF
CONSECUTIVE PHASES OF ANIMAL MOVEMENTS

BY
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE

EXECUTED AND PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

DESCRIPTION OF THE APPARATUS
RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION
DIAGRAMS
PROSPECTUS
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PHILADELPHIA

OR 10 HENRIETTA STREET,
COVENT GARDEN LONDON

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ANIMAL LOCOMOTION.
(ZOOPRAXOGRAPHY.)

INTRODUCTORY.

In 1872, the author of the present work at Sacramento, California, commenced an investigation with the object of illustrating by photography some phases of animal movements. In that year his experiments were made with a famous horse—Occident, owned by Senator Stanford—and photographs were made, which illustrated several phases of action while the horse was trotting at full speed, laterally, in front of the camera.

The experiments were desultorily continued; but it was not until 1877 that the results of any of them were published.

In the meanwhile he devised an automatic electro-photographic apparatus, for the purpose of making consecutive photographic exposures at regulated intervals of time or of distance. Some of the results of his experiments with this apparatus, which illustrated successive phases of the action of horses while walking, trotting, galloping, &c., were published in 1878, with the title of "The Horse in Motion." Copies of these photographs were deposited the same year in the Library of Congress at Washington, and some of them found their way to Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, &c., where they were commented upon by the journals of the day.

In 1882, during a lecture on "The Science of Animal Locomotion in its relation to Design in Art," given at the Royal Institution (see Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, March 13, 1882), he exhibited the results of some of his experiments made during a few antecedent years at Palo Alto, California; when he, with the zoopraxiscope and an oxy-hydrogen lantern, projected on the wall a synthesis of many of the actions he had analysed.

It may not be considered irrelevant if he repeats what he on that occasion said in his analysis of the quadrupedal walk:—

"So far as the camera has revealed, these successive foot fallings are invariable, and are probably common to all quadrupeds....

"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....

"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 some future time the explorer for hidden truths will find it indispensable for his investigations."

In 1883, the University of Pennsylvania, with an enlightened exercise of its functions as a contributor to human knowledge, instructed the author to make, under its auspices, a comprehensive investigation of "Animal Locomotion" in