Talk:Eadweard Muybridge

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Contents 1 Murder? 2 "The Photographer" 3 Influences 4 Problem in description of horse pictures

[edit] Murder?

Muybridge murdered his wife's lover on October 17, 1874, and got away with it, apparently the last convicted murderer in California not to be punished except by reason of insanity. These facts deserve to be mentioned in this article.

[edit] "The Photographer"

Yes, the killing and aquittal do deserve to go into this article−as does the fact that Philip Glass's much-acclaimed 1982 opera The Photographer is based on that incident.

[edit] Influences

I think the small listat the end of the article introduced simply with "influences" needs to be looked at. It's not entirely clear to me how some of these figures (Edison and Dickson, especially) are "influenced" by Muybridge. I intend to remove the section/do major cleanup unless someone objects. --Eyrian 20:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

If you remove such information you would be deleting some very important facts from this entry. At the bottom of the page is a source, Solnet's book, which is the source for these "influences" that you are not understanding. If you delete the info, I will gladly take the time to add some more info that you might be able to understand.

Just so you know, between the years 1870-80, Muybridge met with most of the giants in the field of motion picture innovation, he even went to France to meet with the Carre Brothers. One of the first people he talked with was Edison, who directly used Muybridge's experimental results as a basis for developing his flipping-motion-picture projector (whatever its called).

as for the other comments...

I dont see why Glass's music would have to be given the same importance to this entry as the Muybridge murder case. I don't think the Glass link should be removed, it is fine and so is the paragraph, but Glass's piece is hardly relevant to Muybridge's life. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.204.113.250 (talk • contribs).

Well, if Solnet's book is being used for these sources, it should be used to explain the exact connection. Again, it's fine to keep the influences, I just want to make sure that the connections between them and Muybridge are made clear in the article, which I don't believe they currently are.

Glass's opera about an important event in Mubridge's life seems relevant enough to warrant mention. --Eyrian 02:29, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Historical accuracy is a funny thing especially if one is starting with an opinion about the facts. Muybridge's meeting with Edison was reported in the papers of the time (nov 1888?) and Edison's version of the motion-picture patent came 7 years later. According to Solnet's research, Edison's assistants worked extensively from the work Muybridge began (not just chemical mixtures & exposures, but projection methods and even the fundamental vision of how such a device could be made), so it should be a reasonable assumption that the one influenced the other. Clear enough, right? I will take the initiative to look up all the correct dates of their meeting and type them into the entry in a clearly worded manner so that this historical moment can be understood better.

But understand this, if one begins looking at the facts with the opinion that Muybridge did not influence Edison, then one is needlessly directing the discussion away from an historical-understanding and instead into the realm of revisionist history - so like you said, making it "clear" is what needs to be done, but it must be carefully worded so that it does not become too complicated and overly important. Furthermore, Edison himself has gone through great lengths to foster this kind of false assumption about the influence and to acknowlege these false assumptions would probably not be a "clear" way of presenting the info in this entry. So, when I get around to typing in this info, I will not go into such a discussion, I will just provide a simple sentence or two that gives the dates and lets the facts speak for themselves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.204.113.250 (talk • contribs).

Sure, sounds great. You should understand, I'm not coming at this from any preconceived notions. I just saw some "influences" at the bottom of the page, which didn't seem obivously connected. Some, merely by virtue of their listed inventions, seemed obvious. But the path from Muybridge to Edison is not as straightforward. I look forward to your explanation. --Eyrian 22:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem in description of horse pictures

The article states that the horse photo was to answer if more than 1 hoof is on the ground at once and then goes on to discuss the (apparently not asked) question regarding all the hooves being off the ground at once. Which is it? It then goes on to answer the apparently asked question. However, I think the 'all hooves off the ground' area needs to be clarified somehow. Monty2 08:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Somebody obviously decided to argue with the article inside the article and so you're left with such loose ends! According to Stanford Magazine, though, Stanford's position was that all four hooves were airborne (there's even a name for this, "unsupported transit"), so it doesn't look like this is a "trivially observed" question as the older text had it. I think we can take the university's magazine as reasonably definitive, since they likely had access to his papers in writing it. --Dhartung | Talk 18:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Great find, thanks for the source. The only other place I've really seen this observed was James Burke on one of his shows, I believe Connections, and he went with it being 'all four off the ground' question. Monty2 01:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

So because the movie played on the web page indeed shows one hoof on the ground at a time, the question arises at what point this was considered a conjecture and at what point a finding. I authored the "one hoof" correction because I read the incorrect version elsewhere. And I too remember James Burke report the version I consider incorrect. I may have read the correct version in an old [Scientific American], and don't ask me to cite it!

Some of the citations for "Unsupported transit" that I Googled say "trot", which is a different gait than "gallop". It is entirely possible that two controversies were afloat. All-hooves-up is indeed difficult to see in a trot, but the Muybridge film of a trotting horse pulling a wheeled vehicle indeed reveals it.

The fact remains that you can watch a horse at gallop and see all four hooves off the ground at the same time, without the need to invent any cameras, so the persistence of these inconsistencies regarding Muybridge's work is disturbing. --Phlip