Ever since the mid-19th century, photography has been a part of the world. The popularity of photos grew largely during the Civil War era as photographers took still images of the battlefields as a way to show the rest of the country what was happening. However, in those days you could not take multiple pictures at once within seconds. Photographers would only be able to take one picture, and then have to wait hours for that to process for them to be able to take another. There was absolutely no way for them to take a "burst" of pictures at once and capture movement in the scene.
So how did the first motion pictures come about? In October of 1878, Eadweard Muybridge an English photographer set out to settle a bet. The bet was between a California Businessman named Leland Stanford and his colleagues. Standford claimed that at some point while a horse is running, all four of their legs are off of the ground. None of his colleagues agreed, so he commissioned Muybridge to take rapid pictures of a horse running in all strides.
For Muybridge to capture a horse running in every position, he set up 12 different cameras to all go off at the same time. After collecting the 12 separate images, he was able to compile them all together to make a motion picture. And funny enough, Standford was right. There is indeed one point where a horse has all of their hooves off of the ground. Later in October Scientific American published his short clip of the horse running and it became the first-ever movie. It was black and white, with no sound, and only about 15 seconds long.
The clip put out by Scientific American was projected through a zoetrope. The zoetrope was one of the first pre-animation devices that used multiple pictures to produce the illusion of motion. After the release of The Horse in Motion, it fascinated the world. Muybridge quickly realized the popularity of motion pictures, and with the help of Stanford, he created the first photo projector called a zoogyroscope. This was the start of being able to project moving images to an audience.
Shortly after, the first motion picture camera was invented. Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dickson invented a type of recording camera which they called the kinetograph. The fastest camera of its kind, it could take approximately 40 frames per second, on a reel of up to 15 meters long. The two men also designed a kinetoscope, which was a way to project the film to audiences. Once the public caught wind of their invention, "Kinetograph Parlors" opened around the country. I guess some could say these were the first stages of our modern-day movie theaters.
Finally, as technology kept advancing, by the 1920's early filmmakers were starting to find ways to incorporate sound and music into films. Researching motion pictures has blown my mind. It is crazy how far all forms of media and communication have come over time. I find it crazy how we can go to a movie theater now and watch hour-long films, packed with sound and animation, some even 3D. Or even better, how I can pick up my phone right now and record a horse running without having to set up 12 different cameras.
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