Eadweard Muybridge was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1830. It is said that he was named after a coronation stone in Kingston and that is why he has a strange spelling for the name Edward.
He moved to America at age 20 to run a book shop. 10 years later in 1860 he sold his books to his brother Thomas Muybridge and returned home. On his return to England his coach crashed and he got a bad head injury.
Shortly after Eadweard started photography and really made a name for himself in Yosemite, California. He made his own photography apparatus and converted an old horse carriage into his moving darkroom which was titled, "Helios Flying Studio.” Often Muybridge's Companions would leave him to take his equipment by himself as he would be taking dangerous risks trying to get a daring shot on places such as cliff edges.
He got married and later found out his wife was cheating on him and he shot the man dead! He got out of jail for "justified murder and the head injury driving him to insanity"
In 1877 Muybridge took on the challenge of capturing photographing moving horses. He built a camera shed with up to 24 cameras in a row, in order to create a sequence of images to create the effect on animation, similar to how stop motion works today. in order to make each camera take a image at the right time he setup a contraption with a wire that as the horse ran thru the wire it would set off the camera that the wire was attached to. So as the horse ran thru all the different wires it would be taking photos each one a tiny bit after the previous.
By doing this he had successfully captured the movements of a horse in multiple photographs.
Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope in 1879 which let him show up to 200 images on a screen, which was like motion pictures. He travelled around with lots of big heavy equipment to show his projections and give lectures. He was hired by University of Pennsylvania and did a lot of work around capturing movement. Eventually Muybridge moved back to Kingston. He did a lot in his life contributing to art, science, and the early stages of animation and is considered by many to be the father of animation.
Click Here to watch the full documentary that this information is sourced from.
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