Early SIlent Film: Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878)

A production experiment by photographer Eadward Muybridge on June 15, 1878. The motion picture consists of 24 photographs in a fast-motion series that were shown on a zoopraxiscope (see next paragraph). Muybridge was commissioned by Leland Stanford, the industrialist and horseman, who was interested in gait analysis. The purpose of the shoot was to determine whether a galloping horse ever lifts all four feet completely off the ground during the gait. The shoot used multiple cameras to photograph Stanford's Kentucky-bred Sallie Gardner, galloping at the businessman's farm in Palo Alto, in the presence of the press. The shutters were controlled by trip wires triggered by the horse's legs. The jockey Domm set the mare at a speed of 1:40 gait, which meant that she was galloping at a mile per 1 minute and 40 seconds, equivalent to 36 miles per hour (58 km/h). The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879 - 1880, it may be considered the oldest movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes. The device appears to have been one of the primary inspirations for Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system.