The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, Illustrated With the Zoopraxiscope

Part 1

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Royal Institution of Great Britain.

EXTRA EVENING MEETING,

Monday, March 13, 1882.

H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES, K.G. F.R.S. Vice-Patron and Honorary Member, in the Chair.

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, of San Francisco.

The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, illustrated with the Zoopraxiscope.

The problem of animal mechanism has engaged the attention of mankind during the entire period of the world's history.

Job describes the action of the horse; Homer, that of the ox; it engaged the profound attention of Aristotle, and Borelli devoted a lifetime to its attempted solution. In every age, and in every country, philosophers have found it a subject of exhaustless research. Marey, the eminent French savant of our own day, dissatisfied with the investigations of his predecessors, and with the object of obtaining more accurate information than their works afforded him, employed a system of flexible tubes, connected at one end with elastic air-chambers, which were attached to the shoes of a horse; and at the other end with some mechanism, held in the hand of the animal's rider. The alternate compression and expansion of the air in the chambers caused pencils to record upon a revolving cylinder the successive or simultaneous action of each foot, as it correspondingly rested upon or was raised from the ground. By this original and ingenious method, much interesting and valuable information was obtained, and new light thrown upon movements until then but imperfectly understood.

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.

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.

The action of no single limb can be availed of for artistic purposes without a knowledge of the synchronous action of the other limbs; 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. When these synchronous movements and the successive attitudes they occasion are understood, we at once see the simplicity of animal locomotion, in all its various types and alternations. The walk of a quadruped being its slowest progressive movement would seem to be a very simple action, easy of observation and presenting but little difficulty for analysis, yet it has occasioned interminable controversies among the closest and most experienced observers.

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; these successive appearances were probably combined by the earliest sculptors and painters, and with grotesque exaggeration adopted as the solitary position to illustrate great speed. Or, as is very likely, excessive projection of limb was intended to symbolise speed, just as excess in size was an indication of rank. This opinion is to some extent corroborated by the productions of the Grecian artists in their best period, when their heroes are represented of the same size as other men, and their horses in attitudes more nearly resembling those possible for them to assume. The remarkable conventional attitude of the Egyptians, however, has, with few modifications, been used by artists of nearly every age to represent the action of galloping, and prevails without recognised correction in all civilised countries at the present day.

The ambition and perhaps also the province of art in its most exalted sense, is to be a delineator of impressions, a creator of effects, rather than a recorder of facts. Whether in the illustrations of the attitudes of animals in motion the artist is justified in sacrificing truth, for an impression so vague as to be dispelled by the first studied observation, is a question perhaps as much a subject of controversy now as it was in the time of Lysippus, who ridiculed other sculptors for making men as they existed in nature; boasting that he himself made them as they ought to be.

A few eminent artists, notable among whom is Meissonier, have endeavoured in depicting the slower movements of animals to invoke the aid of truth instead of imagination to direct their pencil, but with little encouragement from their critics; until recently, however, artists and critics alike have necessarily had to depend upon their observation alone to justify their conceptions or to support their theories.

Photography, at first regarded as a curiosity of science, was soon recognised as a most important factor in the search for truth, and its more popular use is now entirely subordinated by its value to the astronomer, the anatomist, the pathologist, and other investigators of the complex problems of nature. The artist, however, still hesitates to avail himself of the resources of what may be at least acknowledged as a handmaiden of art, if not admitted to its most exalted ranks.

Having devoted much attention in California to experiments in instantaneous photography, I, in 1872, at the suggestion of the editor of a San Francisco newspaper, obtained a few photographic impressions of a horse during a fast trot.

At this time much controversy prevailed among experienced horsemen as to whether all the feet of a horse while trotting were entirely clear of the ground at the same instant of time. A few experiments made in that year proved a fact which should have been self-evident.

Being much interested with the experiments of Professor Marey, in 1877 I invented a method for the employment of a number of photographic cameras, arranged in a line parallel to a track over which the animal would be caused to move, with the object of obtaining, at regulated intervals of time or distance, several consecutive impressions of him during a single complete stride as he passed along in front of the cameras, and so of more completely investigating the successive attitudes of animals while in motion than could be accomplished by the system of M. Marey.

I explained the plan of my intended experiments to a wealthy resident of San Francisco--Mr. Stanford--who liberally agreed to place the resources of his stock-breeding farm at my disposal, and to reimburse the expenses of my investigations, upon condition of my supplying him, for his private use, with a few copies of the contemplated results. The apparatus used and its arrangement will be better understood by a reference to the accompanying drawings.

Fig. 1. A photographing lens, and camera containing a sensitised plate; and side view of electro-exposor placed in front of camera.

Fig. 2. Back view of electro-exposor. Two shutters P P, each comprising two panels, with an opening O between them, are adjusted to move freely up and down in a frame; they are here arranged ready for an exposure, and are held in position by a latch L and trigger T, all light being excluded from the lens. A slight extra tension of the thread B, Fig. 4, will cause a contact of the metal springs M S, and complete a circuit of electricity through the wires W W and the electro-magnet M; the consequent attraction causes the armature A to strike the trigger, the latch is released, the shutters are drawn respectively upwards and downwards by means of the rubber springs S S, and light is admitted to the sensitised plate while the openings in the shutters are passing each other in front of the lens.

Fig. 3. Front view of electro-exposor after exposure of the plate.

Fig. 5. General view of studio, operating track, and background. In the studio are arranged 24 photographing cameras; at a distance of 12 inches from the centre of each lens an electro-exposor is securely fixed in front of each camera. Threads 12 inches apart are stretched across the track (only two of which are introduced in the engraving), at a suitable height to strike the breast of the animal experimented with, one end of the thread being fastened to the background, the other to the spring, Fig. 4, which is drawn almost to the point of contact.

The animal in its progress over the track will strike these threads in succession, and as each pair of springs is brought into contact, the current of electricity thereby created effects a photographic exposure, as described by Figs. 2 and 4; and each consecutive exposure records the position of the animal at the instant the thread is struck and broken.

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