Royal Institution of Great Britain.
EXTRA EVENING MEETING,
Monday, March 13, 1882.
H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, K.G. F.R.S. Vice-Patron and
Honorary Member, in the Chair.
Eadweard Muybridge, of San Francisco.
The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, illustrated with the Zoopraxiscope.
The problem of animal mechanism has engaged the attention of mankind during the entire period of the world's history.
Job describes the action of the horse; Homer, that of the ox; it engaged the profound attention of Aristotle, and Borelli devoted a lifetime to its attempted solution. In every age, and in every country, philosophers have found it a subject of exhaustless research. Marey, the eminent French savant of our own day, dissatisfied with the investigations of his predecessors, and with the object of obtaining more accurate information than their works afforded him, employed a system of flexible tubes, connected at one end with elastic air-chambers, which were attached to the shoes of a horse; and at the other end with some mechanism, held in the hand of the animal's rider. The alternate compression and expansion of the air in the chambers caused pencils to record upon a revolving cylinder the successive or simultaneous action of each foot, as it correspondingly rested upon or was raised from the ground. By this original and ingenious method, much interesting and valuable information was obtained, and new light thrown upon movements until then but imperfectly understood.