Muybridge’s galloping horse

It would be hard to top the pioneering work of Eadweard Muybridge in photographing motion before there were reliable motion picture cameras. He used a rather elaborate setup whereby many cameras were loaded with film, one sheet at a time, and set up along a track where the subject, in this case a horse and rider, would go down the track, triggering each camera to take a single shot as they went past. Combining the individual pictures as in a flip book made a movie.

Below is a 12-frame movie that proved that all four feet of a horse left the ground at once when it was galloping. It settled a bet with people who simply didn’t believe a horse could do that! Many artists had depicted horses in a gallop where the feet were extended, and off the ground. That isn’t what Muybridge found; the feet were off the ground when gathered under the body instead. Much more is here at the Wikipedia entry.



People had some goofy ideas a long time ago, like one man who stated that the highest speed sustainable by a human was 120 miles an hour. Others thought the earth was flat. Even today, some people think you can print money fast enough to end an oncoming depression! Nutty.