Eadweard Muybridge

Summary

Summary of "Eadweard Muybridge" Episode on Stuff You Missed in History Class

Release Date: July 28, 2025
Hosts: Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson
Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class by iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction to Eadweard Muybridge

The episode begins with Holly and Tracy delving into the life of Eadweard Muybridge, sparked by Tracy's visit to the Presidio in San Francisco where he encountered Muybridge's statue. Tracy remarks, “[...] there's a lot of story to his life” (03:03). This curiosity leads the hosts to uncover the multifaceted life of Muybridge, encompassing his innovations in photography, his tumultuous personal life, and his brush with infamy.

Early Life and Name Changes

Eadweard Muybridge was born Edward James Muggeridge on April 9, 1830, in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England (04:00). His father’s stable business in coal and grain sales ensured a comfortable upbringing, even after his father's death when Muybridge was just 13. His mother adeptly managed the family business, maintaining their financial security.

In his early twenties, Muybridge moved to London to work with the London Printing and Publishing Company. At 21, he subtly altered his first name from Edward to Eadweard to reflect an Anglo-Saxon heritage, though the exact inspiration remains unclear (05:36). By age 22, Muybridge emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in San Francisco during the post-Gold Rush era, where he ventured into the book business and, later, photography.

The 1860 Stagecoach Accident

In 1860, Muybridge faced a life-altering event when he missed his steamer, the SS Golden Age, intended for a trip to Europe. He arranged alternative travel via the Butterfield Overland Mail Company but suffered a severe accident in northern Texas when the stagecoach crashed into a tree (08:47). This accident resulted in a serious head injury, impairing his vision, hearing, and other senses (09:33).

Despite a grim prognosis from Dr. William Parker, Muybridge persisted, seeking a second opinion from Sir William Gull in London. His tenacity led him to remain in Europe for several years, during which he filed multiple patents and engaged in various business ventures. Upon returning to San Francisco in 1866, he had faced financial losses but had also cultivated a burgeoning interest in photography (12:00).

Rise in Photography and Helios Flying Studio

Muybridge's foray into photography proved highly successful. In 1867, he established the Helios Flying Studio, a mobile photography carriage designed to capture dynamic landscapes, particularly in Yosemite Valley. His innovative approach allowed him to set up equipment in remote locations, offering panoramic and unprecedented views (13:55). A pivotal moment came when he sent his work to the Philadelphia Photographer magazine, which sought his negatives, catapulting his career almost instantly (30:51).

Relationship with Flora Stone and the Murder of Harry Larkins

Muybridge's personal life took a dramatic turn with his marriage to Flora Stone in 1871 (21:57). Flora, originally married to Lucius Stone, was assisted by Muybridge in obtaining a divorce due to her husband's cruelty. The couple's union appeared mismatched—Muybridge was introverted and focused on his work, while Flora was vivacious and social.

In 1873, rumors of an affair between Flora and Harry Larkins, a drama critic, emerged. Muybridge's suspicions culminated in a confrontation in October 1874, where he shot Larkins at point-blank range, leading to a sensational murder trial (34:04).

The Murder Trial and Acquittal

The trial was brief, lasting three days. Muybridge’s defense team argued justifiable homicide and insanity, citing his past stagecoach accident from which he never fully recovered. However, Muybridge vehemently denied any insanity, asserting his deliberate action out of marital duty. Notably, he testified only about the 1860 accident, refusing to discuss the murder itself (35:24).

Ultimately, the jury acquitted Muybridge, influenced by the twisted interpretation of his situation and societal sympathies towards his actions. A newspaper report highlighted the jury’s unusual stance: “they would have done as Muybridge did under similar circumstances” (38:26). Muybridge's reaction to the verdict was intense, nearly fainting from shock (39:13).

Return to Photography and Innovations

Following the trial, Muybridge resumed his photography career with renewed vigor. In 1877, he returned to California and collaborated again with Leland Stanford, photographing Stanford’s horse, Occident, to capture the elusive moment when all four legs of a horse are in the air. Utilizing an array of cameras and a sophisticated trigger system, Muybridge successfully patented this method, creating a series of motion studies that were groundbreaking for both science and art (41:14).

Hay gravity continued to build with Muybridge's invention of the Zoopraxiscope, a device that projected his sequential photographs to simulate motion. This innovation was a precursor to modern cinema, captivating audiences and paving the way for the film industry's evolution (43:16).

Later Career and Legacy

Muybridge's collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania facilitated the creation of an extensive collection of motion photographs. Over nearly two decades, he amassed around 20,000 images, culminating in publications such as "Attitudes of Animals in Motion" (1881) and "Animals in Motion" (1899), among others. His work offered invaluable insights into biomechanics and influenced both scientific research and artistic endeavors.

Despite professional setbacks, including a plagiarism dispute with Leland Stanford, Muybridge's contributions remained significant. His Zoopraxiscope was showcased at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, solidifying his role as a pioneer in motion photography (46:17).

Eadweard Muybridge retired in the early 20th century, returning to England where he passed away on May 8, 1904, after battling cancer. His legacy endures through his monumental advancements in photography and motion studies, influencing both the scientific community and the burgeoning film industry.

Closing Reflections

The hosts reflect on Muybridge's complex life, highlighting his transition from a respected photographer to a figure embroiled in scandal, and ultimately back to prominence through his technological innovations. They emphasize how his enduring fascination with capturing motion laid the groundwork for modern cinematography, ensuring that Muybridge's impact on history remains profound and lasting.

Notable Quotes:

• “[...] there's a lot of story to his life” – Tracy V. Wilson (03:03)
• “He decided to get a third opinion, this time from the best doctors of Europe.” (10:32)
• “We claim a verdict both on the ground of justifiable homicide and insanity.” – Muybridge’s defense team (35:24)
• “No matter what you're playing, Alienware ensures every game runs precisely as its developers intended.” – Ad read, contextual for transcript but excluded from summary.

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Timestamp References:
(For illustrative purposes, the timestamps correspond to the points in the transcript where the information was discussed.)

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Transcript

[Holly Fry]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Unknown Speaker]

I was visiting the Presidio in San Francisco recently, and I started really looking at a statue that I have passed many times there because I love San Francisco and go as often as I can. And that statue is one depicting Edward Muybridge, considered a pioneer of motion picture projection. And I thought, oh, I should look him up. That's interesting. And, hoo, boy, there's a lot of story to his life.

[Holly Fry]

And then I realized a lot of unexpected things. Well, I did.

[Unknown Speaker]

And then I realized, wait, I know this story and I'll talk about why in behind the Scenes. Cause it's, to me, hilarious. The invention that he's memorialized with in that statue is his zoo Praxiscope. But he also innovated in photography. He had some other inventions, and he was also the defendant in a murder trial. He was heavily linked to Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University. So in my book, that's a story worth telling.

[Holly Fry]

Heads up.

[Unknown Speaker]

He also changed his name quite a bit. So in the early parts of this episode, we're gonna use the name he was going by at the time we're talking about. I hope I caught them all, because I think that kind of shares the mercuriality of his Persona throughout the years.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah. So Edward James Muggeridge, spelled M U G G E R I D G E, was born on April 9, 1830, in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England. His father was a merchant who primarily worked in coal and grain sales. This made for a financially stable life for the family. Even after his father died when Edward was only 13, the family was still comfortable. Edward's mother started running the family business, and there was no interruption of their income.

[Unknown Speaker]

As a young man, Edward moved into London to work for the London Printing and Publishing Company. And then when he was 21, he made his first name change, although it's a pretty subtle one. He changed his first name, Edward E D W A R D, the way you would often see it spelled to Edward E a D W E A R D, because he had concluded that it was the version of his name closest to its original Anglo Saxon form. I also read a number of things that said he was naming himself after an Anglo Saxon king, but I could never figure out which of the Anglo Saxon Edwards that would have been.

[Holly Fry]

It does have a very, like Early English, Old English, Middle English kind of vibe to it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. Like he would have a BFF named Ethelred without any sort of question. Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

At the age of 22, he moved to the United States and eventually made his way to San Francisco, where he settled. San Francisco was several years into the gold rush at that time, and it was a place where a lot of people saw potential opportunity. And Edward first sought his fortune in the book business. He set up a shop that sold books, but also still worked for the London Printing and Publishing Company as an agent. It actually been through that company that he was able to travel to the United States in the first place. It was in California that Edward started toying with variations in his last name, shifting first from Muggeridge with an E in it to Mug Ridge without that e between the double G and the R. Eventually, he moved on to Moygridge, which he used for quite a while.

[Unknown Speaker]

That is the pronunciation of that first syllable that I always hear in documentaries about him. But I did hear an English person pronouncing it a little bit more like.

[Holly Fry]

My instead of moy.

[Unknown Speaker]

So that's another. I don't know if he fiddled with those pronunciations along the way either. But in his first eight years in the US where there is some mystery about where he was at various points in time before he got to San Francisco. But once he landed in San Francisco, Edward did very well for himself. His bookshop stayed really busy, and he made a really nice living. He also became acquainted, sort of, thanks to proximity, with photography. Daguerreotypist R.H. vance had a studio right next to Edward's shop. And Muygridge, because he was still using that variation of his name, also became acquainted with a portrait photographer named Willem Shue. Soon, Edward had expanded the offerings in his shop to include photographs that were sold alongside the books.

[Holly Fry]

In 1860, he needed to travel to Europe on an acquisitions trip. He wanted to purchase notable antiquarian books for resale in his shop. He couldn't just leave the shop closed and unattended while he was away, though. So he asked his brother Thomas, who had followed him to the US to handle things while he was gone.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, he actually had two brothers that followed him to the United States. And there are some versions of the story that indicate that they may have already been working in the shop, and others that suggest that he was like, hey, now would be a great time for you to do this, but we don't know. But he had booked passage aboard a steamer, the SS Golden Age, to take him to Europe for this trip. But he missed his ship, and then he had to make arrangements to travel by stagecoach to St. Louis, where he planned to take a train to the east coast and then get travel from from there to Europe by sea. And the seat he managed to book was with the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, which at the time was contracted with mail offices throughout the US to carry mail in bulk as well as taking on passengers.

[Holly Fry]

But partway into the journey, there was an accident. The coach was passing through northern Texas, and the driver lost control when the horses, for some reason started running. There wasn't necessarily a reason. Horses can be unpredictable. The driver tried, according to the news reports, to brake, but that did not work. The stagecoach veered off the road and down a mountain slope, and it crashed into a tree. One of Edwards fellow passengers was killed, but Mugridge and the rest of them sustained injuries. And in his case, he had quite a serious head injury. His vision was seriously affected and his hearing, his other senses were affected as well.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, we'll talk about his accounts of what he was dealing with a little bit later, but it sounded quite scary. After several months of being treated at Fort Smith, Arkansas, which is where he woke up after this accident, Moygridge traveled to New York by stagecoach, which seems brave to me, after that accident to seek medical help from experts. And there he was treated by the president of the New York York academy of medicine, Dr. William Parker. And Parker gave a fairly grave diagnosis that Edward was never going to fully recover. But Muygridge was quite tenacious, and he decided to get a third opinion, this time from the best doctors of Europe. And he really did get what is, at least on paper, the best one. His doctor in London, where he next traveled, was Sir William Gull, who was also Queen Victoria's personal physician. And while under Gull's care, Muygridge lived in England for the next several years, possibly as many as six.

[Holly Fry]

Making a long sea voyage with a serious head injury in this era, also very scary to me. Yes, there's not a whole lot of information about what his recovery in London was like. One thing that is known is that after he had recovered somewhat, he took a trip to New York to file suit. Suit against Butterfield Overland Mail Company over that accident. He got a cash settlement, but it was reportedly only a fourth of the $10,000 that he wanted. He clearly was not idle. While he was convalescing, he filed inventions with the British patent office. One was a plate printing technique for books, and another was an apparatus for washing clothes. He was also making business deals from London and investing in mining and banking ventures in the US And Abroad. Some biographers have come to the conclusion that the actual medical part of his stay in England was actually pretty brief and that he just got busy with all these other things and that kept him from returning to California. It's also possible that he was purposely staying in Europe while the US Civil War was playing out. And it's also been proposed that the brain injury from the crash was a contributing factor to his seemingly haphazard kind of wandering approach to his life during this time. We'll talk a little more about his personality changes after the accident in a bit.

[Unknown Speaker]

By the time he returned to San Francisco in 1866, he had lost money on those various investments he had been making while abroad and he had taken up photography. There are so many theories about when he actually became interested in photography, not just as something he was selling in the shop, but something he was going to do himself. Some people think it was the proximity of his bookshop to photographer that got him started. Others actually believe that his doctor, Sir William Gull, may have suggested it as part of his recuperation. And it's also possible that he picked it up at any other time. But when he got home to California, he reconnected with another photographer and a friend of his that was Silas Selleck. And Selleck is also sometimes invoked as the person who may have been the one to get Edward into photography. Going back even before the stagecoach accident, Edward had also changed his last name once again, this time to the one he's most known by, Muybridge.

[Holly Fry]

Regardless of when his interest in photography began, in 1867, he started taking pictures that would lead him to just immense success. And those were photos of Yosemite Valley. He opened a new business, Helios Flying Studio, which was the name of his photography business. And that was another name that he assumed, Helios, after the Greek word for the sun. This was the name he used initially for his photographic endeavors. The Helios Flying Studio wasn't a brick and mortar location. It was a mobile photography carriage, which sounds cool. He could take it out into the world and on photo adventures, set up his equipment and capture shots and then develop the film in a dark room that he had assembled there in the carriage. That mobility was really important because, as our mention of Yosemite might indicate, his special interest was landscape photography.

[Unknown Speaker]

It is a pretty cool thing. There are some photos of some of his mobile setups where he just has everything he might need at hand and it's kind of groovy. We will talk about his very quick success as a photographer in just a moment, but first we're going to pause for a sponsor break.

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[Holly Fry]

Foreign.

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[Holly Fry]

You go get your shot. If you've ever tried to take a photo of a really sun drenched landscape, even with a modern camera, you probably know that one of the biggest challenges is not having the sky become completely blown out in the exposure. Muybridge also encountered this and he invented an apparatus to deal with it. He called it A sky shade, because it could be manipulated to cover the upper part of the camera's lens so that glare and overexposure would not rob his images of their detail. His use of the sky shade was sort of a simple solve, but his photos were way ahead of anything else on the market at the time. It was not uncommon for landscape photographers to process their photos layered with other photos, most frequently to add skyscape and clouds for dramatic effects. Fact, Muybridge also did this, and he created a collection of sky studies that he could pull from. But although others did it, few of them had the eye for it that Muybridge did. And his are very dramatic and by his own design, very artistic. His photos appeared in magazines and prints were in really high demand for consumers to display in their homes for several years. His success and fame seemed on an an endless upward trajectory. Somewhere along the line, he dropped that Helios name and just was going by Muybridge.

[Unknown Speaker]

In the early 1870s, Muybridge had two people enter his life, each of whom would impact it significantly, but in very different ways. The first person that changed the course of his life was Flora Stone. The two had met at a gallery where Flora was working as a photo retoucher. She was much younger than Muybridge, and she was already married when the two of them met. Her husband, Lucius Stone, was by all accounts, unkind to her at best, and Edward kind of stepped in to help. He helped Flora get a divorce on the grounds of cruelty. So her first marriage, which she had gotten into when she was just 17, ended in late 1870. And then on May 20, 1871, Flora and Edward were married. She was 21 at the time, and he was 40. And Flora was very pretty. She was vivacious. She loved to go out and socialize. And Edward was not terribly interested in things like going to the theater and socializing. So they seemed like kind of an odd match. But according to his friends, he truly loved her.

[Holly Fry]

The other person was Leland Stanford. Born Amasa Leland Stanford in New York in 1824, Stanford had become one of the most powerful men in Calif. As a young man, Stanford had gone into law and had a practice in Wisconsin. But then in 1852, he moved to Sacramento, California, to capitalize on the growing population there and its demand for mining supplies and various necessities.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, he was a merchant for a while, and he did very well for himself. And his success enabled him to also become involved in the railroad industry. He became president of the Central Pacific Railroad when it formed in 1860. 1. And he was a lynch pin in the expansion of rail lines throughout California for several decades. He also made a move into politics, initially at the local level and then kind of moving up the ladder until he became governor of California in 1862. In 1885, he would found Stanford University. In the 2003 book river of Shadows, author Rebecca Solnit describes him this way. This is kind of a not snarky way to describe someone's appearance, but it did tickle me a bit. And knowing that Leland Stanford profited off a lot of people's work, I feel like it's kind of funny. She wrote, quote, stanford is something of an enigma. As a young man, he had the smoldering good looks of a stage villain. But as he became stouter, he came to look like a badly taxidermized badger. Smart enough to become the seventh richest man in the United States, he was often regarded as slow and doltish by his colleagues. So Stanford could easily be his own episode. But in terms of why he is germane to Muybridge's story, Leland Stanford was interested in horses.

[Holly Fry]

But the first meeting between these two men had nothing to do with horses. Muybridge, who was already famous, was hired in 1872 to photograph Stanford's Sacramento home. That project went well enough that Stanford telegraphed with another project. He asked, would Muybridge come back to Sacramento and take photos of Stanford's horse Occident, while he was running at various gates? And Muybridge agreed.

[Unknown Speaker]

So, in truth, Stanford wanted a very specific photo, and he thought that Muybridge was the man who could deliver it. What he wanted was an image that captured the moment during a horse's gait when none of the animal's legs touched the ground. At the time, Stanford believed that this was part of a horse's movement cycle, but he was a little bit of an outlier. There was a lot of debate about this, and most people thought that the horse always had at least one limb touching the earth. The human eye could not conclusively perceive this motion because of its speed. So agreement on the matter was going to require imagery.

[Holly Fry]

Muybridge once again traveled north to Sacramento to see Stanford, and he took a lot of photos of Occident. Unfortunately, we don't have the first photos of Occident that Edward took, although we do have some that he took several years later. They were not meant to be published, although they were written about in an article in the San Francisco examiner, which was then reprinted throughout the United States. It read in part, quote, some time ago, Governor Stanford, the owner of the horse Occident, desired to have a photograph of the animal taken while said animal was going at full speed speed. This article continued with saying that Muybridge quote, procured all the sheets to be had in the stable and with these made a reflecting background. Over this Occident was trained to trot. The great difficulty was to transfix an impression while the horse was moving at a rate of 38ft to the second. The article then notes that the first day of attempts was fruitless. The second day Muybridge captured a shadow, but the third day he quote, contrived to have two boards clap past each other by touching a spring and in doing so leave an eighth of an inch opening for the 500th part of a second as the horse passed and by an arrangement of double lenses crossed secured a negative that shows Occident in full motion. A perfect likeness of the horse. This is probably the most wonderful success in photographing ever yet achieved and the artist is proud of his discovery as the Governor is of the picture taken.

[Unknown Speaker]

So a thrilling achievement. It seemed that Muybridge was poised to really create kind of a completely new branch of photography in figuring out how to capture movement and rapid movement at that. But as this project was underway, Muybridge's fame turned to infamy when he was charged with murder. We'll explain how that came to be after we pause and hear from the sponsors that Keep Stuff youf Missed in History Class going.

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[Unknown Speaker]

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[Holly Fry]

We.

[Unknown Speaker]

Have to return to the subject of Flora, Muybridge's wife. So because of his work, Edward traveled a lot. And it seems that in his absence, Flora turned to another person to escort her out on social engagements. And that man was Harry Larkins, who was a drama critic. Harry Larkins also. Wild story of his own. Maybe one day we'll do a follow up where we talk about him. Initially, this whole arrangement may have actually been okay with Muybridge. As we said earlier, he didn't want to go to the theater and he didn't want to go out and socialize. So this may have seemed like, great, she's got a friend to handle it. But over time, he grew really suspicious of Harry and Harry's intentions toward Flora. And he kind of dramatically and a little bit threateningly the critic to stay away from her.

[Holly Fry]

In late 1873, Flora and Edward had learned that they were expecting a child. There had been two previous pregnancies that had not gone well, and both of those babies had been stillborn. But the third time, everything went fine. They had a son born on April 15th of the following year. They named him Florado Helios Muybridge. Several months after this baby was born, In October of 1874, Muybridge went to the home of the midwife who had delivered the baby, named Susan Smith, because she had not yet been paid, and he intended to give her that payment.

[Unknown Speaker]

So when he got to Smith's home, he saw a photograph of his infant son that he had not seen before. And when he asked her where it came from, Smith stated that Flora had the portrait of the child made at another photographer, right as a retoucher. She was familiar with a lot of photo studios in the city. And then Smith said that Flora had sent the midwife a copy of that photo. When Muybridge picked up the photo to inspect it, he turned it over and on the back, in his wife's handwriting, were the words little Harry. According to Smith's account, after having seen that Muybridge looked like a madman, he became very angry. He demanded that the midwife tell him everything she knew. And she did, later saying that she feared violence if she did not. There was one account I read that said that she demanded money for this information, but her accounts that she gave when things got legal did not indicate that at all. So she told Muybridge that Larry was the father and that she actually had love letters between Larry and Flora to prove it, because she had been helping the two of them by running communications back and forth between Them.

[Holly Fry]

The morning after this revelation, Edward met with a business associate to settle some outstanding debts. And then he started a journey. First, he took a ferry through San Francisco and San Pablo Bays to Vallejo, California. Then he got on a train and went roughly 40 miles north to Calistoga, which is where Harry had moved after Muybridge had told him to stay away from Flora. Muybridge asked after Larkins in Calistoga and found out he was staying on a ranch about eight miles out of town. So he got a horse and buggy and he went there.

[Unknown Speaker]

When he arrived at the ranch, Muybridge asked for Larkins. And once he had the man in front of him, he reportedly stated, this is the reply to the letter you sent my wife. And he shot Harry Larkins at point blank range in the heart with a six shooter. Larkins dropped to the floor, dead after taking a few steps away from Muybridge.

[Holly Fry]

This trial was fascinating. It lasted for only three days. Muybridge's defense team actually took an approach that he did not agree with. The opening speech began with, quote, we claim a verdict both on the ground of justifiable homicide and insanity. We shall prove that years ago. The prisoner was thrown from a stage, receiving a concussion of the brain which turned his hair from black to gray in three days and has never been the same since. Sense. Muybridge didn't believe that insanity was at issue and played no part in his decision making process. He'd been very calm and deliberate in his decision to kill Larkins and believed that it was his right as a husband to do so. After he shot Harry, he was easily taken into custody and disarmed. And he was so calm throughout his booking and charging. At no point was there any effort to try to claim that Muybridge had not killed Larkins. Everybody knew that he had done it.

[Unknown Speaker]

It Moyrush's defense team used the very thing that had made him famous to convey that he was mentally unusual, prone to impulse and possibly insane. Kind of playing into this mad genius trope. Those daring positions he would take to get his incredible Yosemite Vista shots were invoked as evidence that this was not a person most people would consider sane or stable.

[Holly Fry]

Muybridge did testify on his own behalf, although he did so on the condition that he be asked no questions about the murder. And he said that he would only talk about the 1860 stagecoach accident. When it came to discussing the crash, Muybridge stated in testimony that he himself did not remember it. He stated, quote, I left California for a European tour some years ago, in July 1860. I recollect taking supper at a stage house on the road. We then got on board the stage, which was drawn by six wild mustang horses. That is the last I recollect of that. Nine days after that, I found myself at Fort Smith, 150 miles distant, lying in bed. There was a small wound on the top of my head. When I recovered, each eye formed an individual impression, so that looking at you, for instance, I could see another man sitting by your side. I had no taste nor smell and was very deaf. These symptoms continued in an acute form for probably three months. I was under medical treatment for over a year.

[Unknown Speaker]

And though he didn't personally remember the accident, he relayed what had happened as told to him by another person who was involved. Quote, a fellow passenger told me after I had recovered consciousness that after leaving the station, we had traveled for probably half an hour. We were then just entering the Texas Cross Timbers. The mustangs ran away. The driver was unable to control them. Just as we were getting to the timbers, I remarked that the best plan would be for us to get out of the back of the stage because I saw that an accident would take place. He told me that I took out my knife to cut the canvas back of the stage and was preparing to leave when the stage ran against either a rock or a stump hump and threw me out against my head.

[Holly Fry]

Muybridge was acquitted not because the jury didn't think he did it, but because they determined that the murder was justified. The jury's verdict in this case is its own unique situation because the jury basically completely ignored the instructions of the judge. They had been told that they had four options. They could find Boybridge guilty in the first degree with either a death penalty or life imprisonment. Those were two separate options. They could find him not guilty, or they could find him not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge also told them that adultery was not a justification and should not be considered in their deliberation.

[Unknown Speaker]

It took several votes for the jury to come to unanimity. I think it took them a little over a day. They had decided that Muybridge was not insane. But they also could not put out of their consideration the adultery issue, even though they had been expressly told not to factor it in. So they returned a verdict of not guilty. According to a newspaper report covering the trial, quote, they say that if their verdict was not in accord with the law of the books, it is within the law of human nature that, in short, under similar circumstances, they would have done as Muybridge did. And they could not conscientiously punish him for doing what they would have done themselves. Okay.

[Holly Fry]

I stopped what I was doing when I was reading through this for the first time and sent Holly a message saying, I was not expecting the jury to just find that that guy needed killing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Holly Fry]

Muybridge's reaction to this verdict sounds kind of scary. He nearly fainted. He reportedly not rocked in his chair and made movements that seemed like convulsions. He had been completely certain that he would be found guilty. But even after he recovered from this and was an acquitted man, he got out of town. He had already planned a trip abroad. Before the murder and the trial, Muybridge had been given a photography job with Leland's company, Union Pacific Railroad. He had to travel through Mexico and Central America and take photos that could be used for the railroad's publicity campaigns. And then he also took photos for his own art business, of course. Divorce.

[Unknown Speaker]

During all of this, Muybridge and Flora had divorced, but she did not have much of a life after the incident. She had a stroke in the summer of 1875, and she died two weeks later. As for the baby Florado, the San Francisco examiner stated, quote, her babe is with a French family at the mission who have kindly cared for it during the illness of its mother and will, it is believed, adopt it it. But other accounts indicate that the child was actually moved to an Orphanage.

[Holly Fry]

In 1877, Muybridge was back in California and he got back to work on the original horse project that had brought him together with Stanford. It was sort of like that whole murder and trial had never happened. He was able to pick up his life without any real fallout. Leland Stanford had purchased a property in Palo Alto where they once again photographed Occident running. This time, Muybridge worked out a way to solve the shutter speed problem that he had in the early days of this assignment. He used a dozen cameras at once, and each of them let him take photos at an exposure of a thousandth of a second.

[Unknown Speaker]

The setup for this series of photos was kind of incredible. Muybridge had set the cameras up on one side of the area where Oxident would run. And then he rigged a trip wire to each camera. These tripwires were run across this sort of. It's not really a track, but we'll call it that, across the running area. And while they were not substantial enough to pose any impediment to the horse, they were able to trigger the shutters on the cameras so Muybridge could capture shot after shot on different cameras. As the horse made its run. And he eventually patented this setup and.

[Holly Fry]

He got the shot by which we mean he got that long sought after image of a horse midair with no legs touching the ground. Accounts of the photo were published in papers around the country and abroad with a statement that they had been retouched, but in no way altered the image, just quote for the purpose of giving a better effect of the details.

[Unknown Speaker]

But this was still a time when most newspapers could not publish photographs. Most write ups about the photo did not include photos. And the images that did run in articles about the accomplishment were actually line art that had been traced from the photos. Muybridge had become really kind of obsessed with this new method of photographing motion though. So he had several more horse photography sessions using other horses from Stanford stables and also eventually using two dozen cameras instead of 12 to really improve the process. And then he also started photographing other animals and even people in this way.

[Holly Fry]

To bring his progressive motion photos to the public, Muybridge went on tour. And to help show his photos, he invented a device called a Zoopraxis scope. This was a circular glass plate device that had a series of photos around the edge of the circle in sequence. When the light was put behind the glass to project it onto a wall or a screen, the glass would spin and you could watch the subject of the photos in motion.

[Unknown Speaker]

One of the problems of the Zoo Praxiscope was that Muybridge couldn't use the photos he wanted to display as he had originally taken them. If he did, the image when it was projected, would look squished so it appeared taller and narrower than the actual subject he had captured and he wanted it to look like his picture. So he worked out this kind of cool setup that if he tilted the prints of his photos at an angle and curved the upper corners inward and then re photographed those photos when he projected them, the subjects retained their real life proportions. Because the Zoo Praxiscope used a single rotating disc, it created a single repeating loop of action. So it wasn't as though you could tell a narrative story with it. But still, the Zoo Praxiscope was a marvel.

[Holly Fry]

Muybridge published a book of his motion photos in 1881 titled the Attitudes of Animals in Motion. And he promoted it by going on tour again, this time to Europe. But while he was abroad, he was professionally embarrassed by Leland Stanford when he discovered that Stanford's friend J.D.B. stillman, who was a doctor, had published a book about animal motion. Using tracings of his photographs. Stillman had not credited him for taking the photos. Muybridge had been preparing a paper on the same topic for the Royal Society of London, and the Society accused him of plagiarizing Stillman's work work. Muybridge sued Leland Stanford when he got back to the U.S. but he lost.

[Unknown Speaker]

The photographer still had more success ahead of him without Stanford, though. Because of the success of Muybridge's lectures with the Zoe Praxiscope, he was able to strike a deal with the University of Pennsylvania so the school would fund his work creating photographic studies of motion. Over the next nearly two decades, Muybridge was able to take thousands and thousands of photographs seen, the number estimated at 20,000, and that culminated in the publication of a portfolio in 1887 titled Animal An Electrophotographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, as well as two more books in 1899 and 1902. Those books were Animals in Motion and the Human Figure in Motion. Many of the photographs of humans in motion might elicit some giggles because a lot of them are nude series featuring the subjects doing very normal, everyday things like running or playing tennis. Honestly, some of them feel like you're watching a very old Benny Hill skit. But they offered the scientific community a lot of information about the way human bodies move. And artists still use some of these photos today as reference when drawing or painting people in motion. Muybridge had also presented the Zoa praxiscope at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, along with a lecture about the mechanics of animals, animal motion.

[Holly Fry]

By the time he published those later books, Muybridge had finished his work with the University of Pennsylvania and had continued to travel and take photos and lecture and give demonstrations. He had become famous and sparked the imaginations of countless creators, really serving as one of the early pioneers of the film industry.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I can't state strongly enough how much his little spinning door discs made people realize that you could capture and replay for an audience motion. It was quite thrilling for a lot of people. And very quickly other people started building on that idea. In the first years of the 20th century, Muybridge retired. He returned to Kingston upon Thames, and he died there on May 8, 1904, at the home of his sister after a long struggle with cancer. Boy, he did kind of change the world, though, even if he didn't get to live long enough to see it. Yeah, I mean, he lived long enough to enjoy fame and do some other wild things, but I think motion pictures would have really blown his mind.

[Holly Fry]

I had a very silly sentence of he lived long enough to shoot somebody and be acquitted for it.

[Unknown Speaker]

We're gonna talk about that on behind the Scenes. I have a brief listener mail which I love and it's a person that thinks I wouldn't read this listener mail and I will. And I will tell you why I wanna do it. It's really. This is from our listener Nani who writes. Hi ladies. Have you ever opened your podcast app and been so excited to see the title of an episode that you did a little happy dance? Because I just did. I haven't even listened to it yet, but I had to write to tell you how excited I was to see an episode on sewing patterns and not just one A2 parter. I can't wait to get to listening. I'm attaching my obligatory pet tax, my 10 year old rescue Roddy Malou. Thank you for all the amazing knowledge you share. 1 this Rottweiler is so cute.

[Holly Fry]

No.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh my goodness. And I'm one of those people that it breaks my heart that Rottweilers have a reputation for being dangerous because they are by nature the biggest cuddlebugs on the planet. So if you see one that is like that, they have been mistreated in a way that makes them that way and it makes me very frustrated. This baby looks like it is very loved and goofy and I love all of that about it. Also. I just wanted to read this because it was a little moment it love I of phew. Because I know I want to talk about sewing patterns all the live long day. But as I was prepping that episode I was like I hope anybody else cares. So thank you Nonnie. Even if it's just you and me, I feel better.

[Holly Fry]

If you would like.

[Unknown Speaker]

To write to us and share your thoughts about this or any other episode and you know, send us those cute animal pictures. We still love them. You can do that at history [e-mail] you can also subscribe to the show on the iheartradio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

[Holly Fry]

Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

[Unknown Speaker]

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