TWHP


Eadweard Muybridge, 1830-1904   

A native of England, Eadweard Muybridge had established himself as a bookseller in San Francisco by 1856, and four years later he became enamored of photography and christened himself "Helios." He shot the first images of the Yosemite Valley and became one of the most prolific photographers in the West. While away on his travels, his wife dallied with another man, and Muybridge came to suspect that his son was not his own. He traveled to Calistoga and killed the man in 1874, but was later acquitted in Napa--justifiable homicide--after a celebrated trial. In 1878, Muybridge settled a bet on behalf of railroad baron Leland Stanford, who insisted that at some point all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground. Muybridge set up a line of cameras attached to trip wires, and the subsequent series of pictures proved Stanford right. In 1884, he became a respected member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to complete hundreds of motion studies of people and animals; his efforts are said to be the first significant step toward motion pictures. He returned to England to live in 1899, where he died.


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