Motion Studies: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West

In 1872 an Englishman named Eadweard Muybridge photographed a horse in California and thereby invented the essentials of motion picture technology. His patron, the tycoon philanthropist Leland Stanford wanted to know if his trotter Occident ever lifted all four hooves at once, never suspecting what innovations the Englishman's experiments would unleash.
Innovations of the period - transcontinental railroad and the telegraph - were already annihilating the old perceptions of time and space. Now Muybridge's high-speed images dissected and re-animated motion itself. In the eight years of his studies, Muybridge also became a father, a murderer, a widower, the inventor of a clock and an internationally renowned scientist and artist.

A peculiarly Californian story, a dashing history of modern technology and an Englishman's life of unbelievable personal drama, Solnit's portrait of Muybridge never stands still for a moment.