Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904) was really the guy who started it all, and is considered the father of the motion picture. It was he who developed the groundwork for people’s interest in motion pictures by using high-speed photography (at the time this consisted of several pictures being taken by separate cameras, and then showed in succession to create the illusion of movement). The way he would do this was by setting up multiple cameras in a row, allowing them to be tripped by whatever subject he was photographing.
Zoopraxiscope disc
This was made famous by his “The Horse in Motion” (1878) (seen right), a feat he pursued when the then governor of California Leland Stanford had started a bet among his colleagues that when a horse ran, all four hooves left the ground at once. Muybridge did this by setting up 16 different cameras along the track, and captured the movement of the horse. Although this was enough for Stanford to win the bet, it wasn’t until a couple years later that he perfected capturing motion. He then developed his zoopraxiscope, a device that allowed him to project all the separate images together.
Zoopraxiscope Device
Muybridge was the inspiration of many individuals who would lead the film industry into what it is today. Thomas Edison was most notably one of the first to be inspired by him, which lead to his creation of the kinetoscope, and also spurred the cinematographe by the Lumiere brothers. Another individual that was highly influenced by Muybridge was Etienne-Jules Marey, who came up with the chronophotographic gun, a device that took 12 consecutive frames a second. What was interesting about this device was the fact that all frames were on a single image. Although it was similar to Muybridge’s process of capturing motion, it was also different in this aspect. All of these people helped pave the way for the film industry, and Muybridge started it.