The Horse in Motion.

Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882. Small folio, original pictorial black and gilt-stamped dark green cloth over boards, t.e.g.. [iii]–viii, 127 pp., 107 plates, including 9 chromolithographs, 5 heliotypes, and 98 lithographs.

First edition of this important book documenting Muybridge’s groundbreaking work in motion photography.

Leland Stanford, railroad magnate, a governor of California and founder of Stanford University, reputedly made a bet that, for a moment in the course of its galloping stride, all four of a horse’s hooves are simultaneously off the ground. Because the moment is too fleeting for the human eye to detect, Stanford hired English-born photographer Eadweard Muybridge, already well known for his photographs of western American landscapes, to prove him right. Although Muybridge’s work was apparently interrupted by his determination to track and kill his wife’s lover, he eventually devised a system of 24 successively placed cameras whose shutters were linked to trip wires set off by the galloping horse. The resulting sequence of photographs, reproduced here as lithographs, was a “technical and conceptual breakthrough” (Tate Museum) which not only of course won Stanford’s bet and opened the doors to new conceptions of animal locomotion, but also set the stage for motion picture cameras and the film industry. Illustrated with black and white plates depicting the horse in motion and chromolithographs of horse anatomy.

CONDITION: Very good, discreetly re-backed with original spine laid down, covers slightly worn, head and foot of spine rubbed, corners bumped, contents clean, binding tight; nineteenth century bookplate of Newton Hall, Cambridge on front paste-down. Over all a bright, solid, and attractive copy.