I t is hard to believe that Philadelphia was once a hub of innovation, beyond the “wrapping a slice around a cheesesteak with the whiz.” But it was here where Muybridge wrapped his love of innovation around his love of photography with the whiz. He took a multi-plate trick he was using to create panoramas and re-jiggered it to shoot frames of a running horse. Building off the zoetrope, Muybridge developed the zoopraxiscope. A far superior invention as noted by the complicated arrangement of letters and the incorporation of an “X” in the name. Eventually this alphabetical behemoth became the grandfather of the motion picture projector, and possibly a prescription drug. Ask your doctor if zoopraxiscope is right for you.
Former California Governor and famous “Brony” Leland Stanford funded Muybridge’s creation of the zoopraxiscope, his famous series the Horse in Motion, and a lifelong spitting contest between Stanford and Muybridge–even after the courts decided that Stanford had more spit. The Horse in Motion was an attempt to capture “a correct theory of animal progression,” basically photographic evidence of how animals move. The look and feel of Muybridge’s aesthetic of “moving thing” against a grid is still seen in slow motion and scientific footage, and every episode of MythBusters. If Muybridge were alive today, he would sue all of them with or without the whiz.
Afterward:
My dog-eared copy of Muybridge’s The Male and Female Figure in Motion is beloved. It is as crucial a tool. His works are still seen as necessary artifacts to the evolution and identification of every artist, whiz be damned.