Google has marked the 182nd year of Eadweard Muybridge the pioneering photographer and forefather of modern filmmaking. Born in England, Muybridge, was of Dutch ancestry and spent a great part is life in the United States. Influenced by the name of King Edward, Muybridge changed his first name to Eadweard,in 1870s a spelling retained till the rest of his life.
He is revered for his innovative work in animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion. He is also remembered for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.
The galloping horse shown in today’s google doodle was part of an experiment called ‘Sallie Gardner at a Gallop’. The purpose of the photograph was to put to rest the debate over whether a horse’s all four hooves get off the ground at the same time while it trots. Muybridge proved this through his series of 24 photographs shown on his zoopraxiscope.
Muybridge’s celebrated experimental works showing animals and humans in motion. These photographs used new mechanisms that Muybridge invented himself to freeze the image of a galloping horse or a somersaulting acrobat. This revolutionary motion-capture technique produced iconic images that have profoundly influenced generation upon generation of photographers, artists and filmmakers.
Muybridge was the man who famously proved a horse can fly. Adapting the very latest technology to his ends, he proved his theory by getting a galloping horse to trigger the shutters of a bank of cameras. This experiment proved indisputably for the first time what no eye had previously seen – that a horse lifts all four hooves off the ground at one point in the action of running. Seeking a means of sharing his ground-breaking work, he invented the zoopraxiscope, a method of projecting animated versions of his photographs as short moving sequences, which anticipated subsequent developments in the history of cinema.
Google doodles are the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. The first doodle was created by Larry Page and Sergy Brin in the year 1998 to mark the celebrations of the Burning Man Festival. It has become a tradition that many of us look forward to covering subjects from Charles Adams to the Simpsons.
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