Before the Video Camera: First Steps

Just how does one get a still picture to move? And who figured out how to do it?

 If I could go back in time and ask these questions, we’d hear an international chorus of me, me, moi, moi, as Englishman Eadweard Muybridge, American Thomas Edison, and Frenchmen, Louis LePrince and Louis Lumiere all raise their hands frantically.  And they do all own a piece of the answer, for no single inventor could have done it without looking at the ideas of the others.

In this and the next  post  we’ll confine our discussion to Muybridge and Edison, for it is their inventions that are in direct line with what we call the video camera today. It is also amusing to note that judging from the lives they lived, neither one of these pioneers of moving images was able to sit still for long.

Before we start though, let’s keep in mind that a movie camera is nothing more than a camera that captures many images in sequence and records them on media. What sets the images in motion?

 Your brain; we are only able to process individual frames if presented  at a maximum of 12 per second. Our brains hold these images for about 1/15 of a second.  So if frames are presented at 15 per second or faster, we will perceive them as continuous motion. Early movies, or moving pictures, as they were rightly called had a frame rate of 14 to 24 images per second.

Keeping that basic concept in mind, let’s see what Muybridge did with it.

Eadweard Muybridge

British expatriate Eadweard Muybrige might never have been inspired to explore the moving image had not  Leland Stanford ,governor of California, businessman, and horse-owner been set on winning an argument.

Does a horse, at any time, while trotting, lift all four feet off the ground?

Stanford was on the yay side. In fact he was so entrenched that he hired Muybridge to prove him right. Famous for his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, Muybridge was a brilliant but eccentric photographer. And true to his nature, his new project followed a circuitous route to its completion.  Initially hired in 1872, Muybridge’s first attempts failed due to the lack of a fast enough shutter on his camera. His second attempt was delayed by six years; a period in which he was acquitted of murdering his wife’s lover.

After such a close brush with being confined to one space, he spent the next few years traveling though Mexico and South America. He supported himself with publicity photos taken for Union Pacific Railroad, owned by none other than Leland Stanford.

Upon his return to California Muybridge resumed his horse-in-action quest, working with a set-up of anywhere from 12 to 24 cameras, each equipped with a special shutter he designed to give an exposure of 2/1000 of a second. When lined up in sequence, it did appear that there were frames that captured  all four feet drawn up under the horse. Line drawings of his images soon circulated among the horsey set.

However with the publicity, came skepticism.  Doubters pointed to the leg positions in several of the frames and claimed they were anatomically impossible. Never one to back down from proving his point, Muybridge invented a device called a zoopraxiscope and took to the road for a series of lectures.

The zoopraxiscope was a lantern-like device that centered around a glass disc upon which he printed his photographs.  

 When the disc was rotated, the images were projected to the screen in rapid succession, giving viewers the illusion of motion. 

Some claim the zoopraxiscope was the precursor of modern cinema.  

Muybridge next devoted his efforts  to showing  humans in motion. His studies resulted in over 100,000 images capturing progressive movements within fractions of a second. 

A  question occurred to him : What if I could add sound?

 Upon hearing of the new sound producing phonograph Thomas Edison had invented, Muybridge and the zoopraxiscope traveled to New Jersey with just this proposition for Mr. Edison. 

Our next post will delve into what Mr Edison thought. Meanwhile if you are looking to purchase an IP camera or IP camera system or need information about one, please visit  www.kintronics.com