Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be embarking on
Speaker 1: a sort of second part of our saga of photographic history.
Speaker 1: We just did several parts talking about the camera obscura
Speaker 1: and then the invention of photography, and now we're moving
Speaker 1: on to the motion picture. And I wanted to start
Speaker 1: with a question that might be a stupid question, but
Speaker 1: it's something that I often think about when I go
Speaker 1: to the movies, and it's that when you go to
Speaker 1: the movies, you sit down to see a motion picture.
Speaker 1: The basic media that you're viewing is a succession of
Speaker 1: still images that are perceived by the brain, is continuous
Speaker 1: visual motion and audio that accompanies it. And so that
Speaker 1: in itself is pretty neutral, right like that that it
Speaker 1: could show you any number of sights and sounds. But
Speaker 1: what we came to view for some reason as the
Speaker 1: motion picture, the thing you go see in a theater
Speaker 1: most of the time these days, is something like a
Speaker 1: visual novel or a visual short story. It's like a
Speaker 1: story shaped thing, and then you watch it for an
Speaker 1: hour and a half or two hours and then it's over.
Speaker 1: And obviously there are lots of exceptions to this, and
Speaker 1: if you want to expand a video you I mean, god,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a whole pool of different kinds of
Speaker 1: content out there, But the things we think of as
Speaker 1: movies are these stories. And I wonder why that is. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of we said about just
Speaker 1: the importance of storytelling in human culture or something we've
Speaker 1: talked about on Stuff to Blow your mind recently. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's a major factor, Like what do we
Speaker 1: what do we do with our art and our technology
Speaker 1: while we do human things? We we tell stories for starters.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting when you go back to the earliest
Speaker 1: days of the motion picture, I feel like you get
Speaker 1: a sense back then that it wasn't always necessarily gonna
Speaker 1: be this way, because yeah, it's some of the the
Speaker 1: examples we're going to discuss in this episode. You see
Speaker 1: the more of the scientific direction of motion picture, the
Speaker 1: way that motion picture can be used to to unravel
Speaker 1: what is actually going on in the world, to to
Speaker 1: slow it down and to better understand it. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: either present kind of a non story based visual spectacle
Speaker 1: to just kind of show you a succession of things happening,
Speaker 1: or to study, Yeah, to study the world and get
Speaker 1: a closer look at it, maybe to see it in
Speaker 1: a kind of slow motion that you wouldn't have seen before.
Speaker 1: So you're you're wondering if there's perhaps like an alternate
Speaker 1: reality where it, say, documentary is the primary Like when
Speaker 1: someone says, hey, do you want to come over to
Speaker 1: our house and watch a movie, you just assume documentary,
Speaker 1: and then if it's a fiction film, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's not a documentary, how surprising, or things that might
Speaker 1: be called like art films. Now, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a million different ways you could show somebody a succession
Speaker 1: of still images simulating motion and accompanying sound, and it
Speaker 1: would not like, you know, there's an infinite variety of
Speaker 1: things you could do there that wouldn't be a story
Speaker 1: that some somewhat simulates the structure of a novel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or or I mean there of course, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of things like say, live sporting events also
Speaker 1: presented via the medium of essentially the moving picture. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe then this just has more to do with with
Speaker 1: our categories, like the things that we end up calling
Speaker 1: movies because as you know, as we mentioned a minute
Speaker 1: ago there there's there's an whole internet full of video
Speaker 1: content that you wouldn't call movies, but it's it's something, right, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: But you know this, this does get to the heart
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about here and what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about with the evolution of photographic technology. How it
Speaker 1: how we see that the technology grow advance, then spread
Speaker 1: out and and and become you know, not merely the
Speaker 1: technology of elite individuals, but the technology of the man,
Speaker 1: and then how that inevitably changes everything as well. Exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we have been talking about
Speaker 1: in our history of photography here is how the invention
Speaker 1: of photography was sort of part of a quest for
Speaker 1: ever increasing realism in imagery, right that that was something
Speaker 1: that Louis de Guerre was concerned with. He wanted to
Speaker 1: create more and more realistic paintings, first working on his
Speaker 1: panoramas and the diorama, like taking the art of painting
Speaker 1: to two new heights of realism and simulating real scenes,
Speaker 1: and of course the next step beyond that is directly
Speaker 1: just transferring the light reflected off of things onto a
Speaker 1: permanent record. But of course, as we were talking about,
Speaker 1: fixed images are also sort of a simulation because reality
Speaker 1: is never a fixed image, right, We we see a
Speaker 1: fixed image and it kind of implies motion, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this this wonderful blurring that kind of takes place
Speaker 1: in our imagination. Yeah. Just I mean, just think about
Speaker 1: the ways that people had to be put in the
Speaker 1: Iron Maiden in order to have their portrait taken in
Speaker 1: the earliest Guera types, because you know, you had a
Speaker 1: exposure of several minutes and you couldn't move your face,
Speaker 1: and so how natural is that a representation of a person.
Speaker 1: Uh So the real way to get reality even more,
Speaker 1: to get even closer to the experience of just looking
Speaker 1: at the world, would be to record continuous imagery. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This there's a particular type of video portrait. I think
Speaker 1: probably a number of people have probably seen it utilized
Speaker 1: in the film Baraca that came out many years ago.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, Oh you should. It's a you know,
Speaker 1: fabulous and beautiful cinematography. Um just you know, scenes of
Speaker 1: life and tradition and ritual around the world. But they're
Speaker 1: these wonderful scenes where it's just an individual staring into
Speaker 1: the camera and and you're just kind of locking eyes
Speaker 1: with them, and it feels it feels very intimate. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's essentially a motion portrait. That is interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder why that didn't catch on once we had
Speaker 1: photo and video technology as the new form of portrait.
Speaker 1: You had painted portraiture, then you had photo portraiture. Why
Speaker 1: not video portraiture. So up on the wall, there's Grandpa.
Speaker 1: They're just on a continuous loop of about ten minutes
Speaker 1: of looking into the camera. Well that's what they have
Speaker 1: in the Harry Potter world. There do not seem to
Speaker 1: really be any stationary photographs. All photographs are these motion portraits.
Speaker 1: So their ahead, Yeah, they are aheading. We don't lack.
Speaker 1: The technology is just that doesn't seem to be what
Speaker 1: people want when they're in their portraiture. Alright. So yeah,
Speaker 1: as as we've been discussing, some of the predecessors to
Speaker 1: the motion picture are are very much the photographic technologies
Speaker 1: we've discussed before. But but but some things are not
Speaker 1: really directly related to that technology. And then we also
Speaker 1: really need to discuss some key phenomena that play into
Speaker 1: the experience of motion picture viewing. Right, These would be
Speaker 1: neurological and brain brain phenomena. Psychological phenomenon also, and one
Speaker 1: of these phenomena has historically been referred to though it's
Speaker 1: a problematic concept. We can discuss a little bit as
Speaker 1: as persistence of vision, and other relevant phenomena that I
Speaker 1: think we'll have to mention are known as beta motion
Speaker 1: and the five phenomenon, which we will collectively call a
Speaker 1: parent movement or a parent motion. Right, So as we proceed,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll kind of like catch up on all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but let's let's start with this idea of persistence of vision. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how do we think about motion pictures? Well, when
Speaker 1: when when it's really good, we often don't think about
Speaker 1: it at all, do we? Well? Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what they say is the best director of a film
Speaker 1: is the one who creates a film where you don't
Speaker 1: notice the direction, Like you're not picking out technical elements,
Speaker 1: I mean unless you're really looking for them. But it's
Speaker 1: the person who creates the film that is pure experience, right,
Speaker 1: You just get lost in the action, the emotion, the wonder.
Speaker 1: But even if we're say a little bit bored or
Speaker 1: checked out during a movie, or a TV show. We
Speaker 1: may think of these things as well. We might just
Speaker 1: think of it as a massive production or a work
Speaker 1: of our We might kind of take it apart in
Speaker 1: these different directions, right, Like, I wonder how they shot this,
Speaker 1: So this is this is a pretty pretty long take.
Speaker 1: I'm bored, but I'm admiring the all the work that
Speaker 1: went into making it. But we're probably not thinking of
Speaker 1: the film that we're viewing as visual stimuli. That exploits
Speaker 1: a loophole in the way that we process images, right,
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what it is. It's taking advantages of
Speaker 1: sort of particular facts about the way our eyes and
Speaker 1: our brains work to make us have the illusion that
Speaker 1: we're looking at continuous images when actually we're when we're
Speaker 1: looking at a succession of still images that do not
Speaker 1: move at all. That's right. So, persistence of vision is
Speaker 1: is the retention of a visual image for a short
Speaker 1: period of time after the removal of the stimulus that
Speaker 1: produced it. The human brain can only process ten to
Speaker 1: twelve images per second, retaining an image for a for
Speaker 1: up to a fifteenth of a second. If a new
Speaker 1: image comes along within a fifteenth of the second, it
Speaker 1: creates an illusion of continuity. Yeah. Now, in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: persistence of vision was originally sort of believed to occur
Speaker 1: because images lingered on the retina for a short period
Speaker 1: of time after you see them. But I think that's
Speaker 1: not exactly believed to be the true cause of the
Speaker 1: experience of persistence of vision. Now, it is true that
Speaker 1: fast successions of still images are processed in the brain
Speaker 1: as continuous motion or you know, as as a single experience,
Speaker 1: and not as a a succession of images, but not
Speaker 1: because the retina functions like a camera taking snapshots that
Speaker 1: can be measured in frames per second, where they stack
Speaker 1: up if they come fast enough. I think the idea
Speaker 1: there was that you'd sort of blend one frame into another, uh,
Speaker 1: that persists as new frames are sensed. But our modern
Speaker 1: understanding of vision as as perception is less like a
Speaker 1: camera taking snapshots and more kind of like an integrated
Speaker 1: sensation that involves the brain as much as the eyes.
Speaker 1: So even though the original understanding of persistence of vision
Speaker 1: might not be exactly technically correct, I think it's still
Speaker 1: useful as a metaphor for one way that the still
Speaker 1: image seems to flow smoothly from one moment to the next.
Speaker 1: If these still images are projected fast enough, and it
Speaker 1: it's ultimately simulates continuous motion. Yeah. And so motion pictures
Speaker 1: were traditionally sixteen frames per second for silent films and
Speaker 1: then twenty four frames per second for sound films. And
Speaker 1: that seems to be kind of a low threshold of
Speaker 1: what we what is good enough for us to perceive
Speaker 1: is continuous motion. Yeah. Anything anything less than that, and
Speaker 1: you're going to get into sort of a herky jerky
Speaker 1: stop motion kind of feel right towards then the herky
Speaker 1: jerkyman singing songs of love. Yeah. The the fire effect
Speaker 1: was originally defined in nineteen twelve by psychologist mac Max Verdheimer,
Speaker 1: and it's a He looked at it as a type
Speaker 1: of optical illusion of perceiving a series of still images
Speaker 1: when viewed in rapid session as a continuous motion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is one form of apparent movement. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that these two concepts are apparently constantly confused.
Speaker 1: In writings on Photo History, I came across this because
Speaker 1: I was getting confused reading about them when preparing for
Speaker 1: the episode. Uh So. In in writings on vision Perception,
Speaker 1: and film scholarship. The definitions of beta movement in five
Speaker 1: effect seem kind of blurred together, as documented in a
Speaker 1: two thousand paper published in the journal Vision Research. So
Speaker 1: it took me forever to figure out what was going
Speaker 1: on here, and I was glad to find out it
Speaker 1: wasn't just me. Now here's the short, simple version both
Speaker 1: of these two phenomena, the FI effect and beta movement,
Speaker 1: they enable us to see various kinds of illusory motion
Speaker 1: in successive still images, but they referred to different speeds
Speaker 1: of projection and types of visual sensation. And to the
Speaker 1: best of my understanding, it appears to me that what's
Speaker 1: taking place in our perception of films is more related
Speaker 1: to what's known as beta movement. But either way, it's
Speaker 1: the brain's tendency to interpret certain types of changes in
Speaker 1: successive static images displayed at the right speed as smooth
Speaker 1: continuous motion. So, for example, if you see successive still
Speaker 1: images in which three dots are changing position on a
Speaker 1: black background in between the images, if you project them
Speaker 1: fast enough, we don't see images one at a time,
Speaker 1: but we see a snake moving around. Basically, you know
Speaker 1: what happens when you make a little flipbook out of
Speaker 1: the corners of a of a document. Yeah, so, on
Speaker 1: its own, apparent movement is an extremely interesting phenomenon given
Speaker 1: what it illustrates about the brain. It might be more
Speaker 1: mysterious and more interesting than we give it credit for,
Speaker 1: especially now that we're used to the idea of movies.
Speaker 1: But we've discussed it a bit on stuff to blew
Speaker 1: your mind before. In the context of forming a perception
Speaker 1: of the present moment in our sense of now, like
Speaker 1: apparent movement cited under the name of the fire effect
Speaker 1: can be demonstrated, for example, by rapidly flashing dots on
Speaker 1: different parts of a screen. Uh. And if the flashes
Speaker 1: are timed and positioned correctly, we don't just perceive a
Speaker 1: dot flashing here and then a dot flashing there, but
Speaker 1: we perceive a single dot that moves between the locations
Speaker 1: of the flashes. And this is one of the many,
Speaker 1: many ways for us to realize that our vision is
Speaker 1: not a straightforward objective record of reality, but it's a
Speaker 1: world of sensation stitched together in the brain based on
Speaker 1: objective light data, but definitely not a one to one
Speaker 1: representation of it. And just as a side note, because
Speaker 1: it's too strange and interesting not to mention. One really
Speaker 1: spooky effect here is the so called color fi effect.
Speaker 1: So what happens if you take this principle of two
Speaker 1: flashing dots perceived as a single dot in motion, and
Speaker 1: then you change the colors of the dots between flashes.
Speaker 1: If your brain perceived continuous motion when there was none,
Speaker 1: how does it handle the color change between the end
Speaker 1: points of this path? You imagine you see the dot
Speaker 1: taking right, flashes here, then flashes there, but changes color
Speaker 1: in between. What what? What does the brain do there? Will?
Speaker 1: Studies show that people tend to perceive a change in
Speaker 1: the color of the dot about halfway along the path
Speaker 1: that it takes. So you flash a red dot, then
Speaker 1: you flash a green dot, and people see a dot
Speaker 1: zip from one place to the other and change color
Speaker 1: from red to green about halfway there. But the really
Speaker 1: interesting question is how can you have seen the dot
Speaker 1: change color halfway there if it wasn't actually traveling and
Speaker 1: you didn't know what color the second dot would be
Speaker 1: until you saw it. Oh wow, Yeah, that that's that
Speaker 1: really forces you to rethink how we're perceiving now, how
Speaker 1: we're perceiving time exactly. It's so strange because it's like,
Speaker 1: for a split second your brain was able to predict
Speaker 1: to the future, but of course we know that's not
Speaker 1: what happened. In fact, what this seems to indicate instead
Speaker 1: is that not only is our vision a stitch together
Speaker 1: impression in our minds that's not a one for one
Speaker 1: representation of reality, our perception of time from moment to
Speaker 1: moment is a stitch together simulation as well, such that,
Speaker 1: like our very perception can essentially be post addicted. What
Speaker 1: you think you see in one split second can be
Speaker 1: changed by what you see a split second later. It's
Speaker 1: not until after you see the green dot that your
Speaker 1: brain forms your perception of the dot you saw halfway
Speaker 1: along its imaginary journey. So this means you're not just
Speaker 1: seeing with your eyes, you're seeing with your memory and
Speaker 1: with other cognitive functions of your brain. So it's it's
Speaker 1: vision is not reality. Of course, it's an illusion mostly
Speaker 1: informed by reality, but it's sort of formed in a
Speaker 1: in a in an anti chamber of consciousness that's not
Speaker 1: quite there in your sensation, where things are quickly edited
Speaker 1: together for you to perceive. And of course all this
Speaker 1: is crucial in the way that movies work. Movies are
Speaker 1: not merely audio visual objects. They require quirks of the
Speaker 1: human brain to make sense and to feel like representations
Speaker 1: of reality. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to continue to discuss
Speaker 1: how of the motion picture works in our brain and
Speaker 1: then also some of the earlier models of this technology.
Speaker 1: All right, so I've got a kind of weird proposition
Speaker 1: about film technology, and it is that film technology we
Speaker 1: should think of the earliest versions of it that originally
Speaker 1: evolved as a specifically human biotechnology, sort of like a
Speaker 1: medicine made specifically for the human body, rather than as
Speaker 1: a pure physical technology, because it has to do specifically
Speaker 1: with the human brain and the human eye. That's right.
Speaker 1: This is something that I think is really mind blowing
Speaker 1: to to think about, because given the numbers we mentioned previously,
Speaker 1: you know, the human brain can only process ten to
Speaker 1: twelve images per second um and and you know, and
Speaker 1: then the way that the image will persist for the
Speaker 1: fifte the second. You might be thinking, well, what about animals?
Speaker 1: What about the various pets it we sometimes have hanging
Speaker 1: out in our living rooms while the TV is on.
Speaker 1: You might wonder, well, can some animals not see television
Speaker 1: or films, or at least not see it the same
Speaker 1: way we do? Right? And then how do they see it?
Speaker 1: What would that be like just uh, to have different eyes,
Speaker 1: different visual processing. I was wondering about this and I
Speaker 1: found an excellent little article in Science Nordic and UH.
Speaker 1: In this particular article do dogs see what's happening on TV?
Speaker 1: They talked to Auto rope Stad, an associate or at
Speaker 1: least then associate professor at the Norwegian School of Veterinary
Speaker 1: Science and UH. He pointed out that he would this
Speaker 1: would probably be like a strobe like torture show for
Speaker 1: for any for for various animals to try and watch
Speaker 1: or be forced to watch television um or a movie
Speaker 1: at least on an older television set. So they're they're
Speaker 1: they're being visited by the herkee jerkyman basically. So. The
Speaker 1: article points out that while humans requires in this articles
Speaker 1: at sixty twenty images a second to perceive the illusion
Speaker 1: of films, dogs require seventy images per second. So it's
Speaker 1: really only been in the past decade or so that
Speaker 1: TV has become watchable to the canine audience. So at
Speaker 1: least for the you know, the vast majority of canines
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, my dog has never shown any interest
Speaker 1: in TV at all, even you know, our our more
Speaker 1: recent TV and I but I think that may just
Speaker 1: be because he's a snob. Because I was looking this
Speaker 1: up and uh, there is research indicating that dogs can
Speaker 1: recognize images, such as the images of other dogs and
Speaker 1: humans on modern digital TV screens. It just seems like
Speaker 1: some dogs don't really care. I also wonder about just
Speaker 1: like the senses and that are important to have given
Speaker 1: an organism, because obviously dog can't smell. Yeah, that the
Speaker 1: dog sense of smell is is phenomenal, Like it they
Speaker 1: live in a different sensory realm Uh that it's really
Speaker 1: difficult for us to try to even imagine where it's.
Speaker 1: It's really like like odor first, and if you remove
Speaker 1: odor from the equation, they're just not going to be
Speaker 1: taken in by the illusion. But we're we we put
Speaker 1: all of our emphasis on visuals and then you know,
Speaker 1: an audio second. Uh, we don't for the most part,
Speaker 1: we don't really care what the films would smell like
Speaker 1: outside of you know, a few smell a vision gimmicks
Speaker 1: here and there. For the most part, we're we're fine
Speaker 1: not smelling the film. Are we going to do an
Speaker 1: episode on smell a vision one of the most important
Speaker 1: inventions of the twentieth century. I think it would be
Speaker 1: cool to do an episode where we talk about all
Speaker 1: the sort of failed inventions and innovations of of of
Speaker 1: the movie theater industry. Uh, you know, getting into The
Speaker 1: Tingler and whatnot. The Tingler, Yes, fun film, The Tinkler. Um.
Speaker 1: But okay, so the dogs seventy images per second. The
Speaker 1: article points out that birds need a hundred frames per
Speaker 1: second to see. And while the article didn't mention cats,
Speaker 1: I have read elsewhere that they need a hundred frames
Speaker 1: per second as well. Um and uh, and I have
Speaker 1: noticed that that our cat, she will all lot of
Speaker 1: times just not look at the television, but occasionally we'll
Speaker 1: put on these these HD bird watching videos on YouTube
Speaker 1: and she definitely perks up and gets into those. Now,
Speaker 1: part of that is listening. Of course, dads have have
Speaker 1: you know, amazing hearing, so they are you know, they're
Speaker 1: she's definitely listening to all these birds sounds. But then
Speaker 1: she's also tracking the movements as well. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: conceivably though this would not have been the case if
Speaker 1: you were playing bird videos in prior decades. Well, I
Speaker 1: think one thing we should keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: our while we can be fooled in this illusion of
Speaker 1: successive still images being interpreted as motion in our vision,
Speaker 1: um that all our sense are different. Senses are not
Speaker 1: all synchronized in how they perceive things. Uh, And they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't get fooled in exactly the same way as.
Speaker 1: For example, I was reading somewhere that in the early
Speaker 1: days of film technology, when you would have like a
Speaker 1: hand crank film playback, people could deal with slight variations
Speaker 1: and speed at which the visual frames were coming, but
Speaker 1: they could not deal with variations in which the accompanying
Speaker 1: sound was coming. Yeah, I think back on on the
Speaker 1: like the the the varying levels of of video quality
Speaker 1: I've been willing to deal with, such as watching like
Speaker 1: half scrambled episodes of Tales from the crypt you know,
Speaker 1: in in my my childhood. But but when it comes
Speaker 1: to audio, if there is audio present, like you needed
Speaker 1: to have a certain degree of fidelity. Now, all of
Speaker 1: this we we've discussed, then you can probably guess there
Speaker 1: are ways to get to these effects, to to exploit
Speaker 1: these phenomena and the human visual processing system without using
Speaker 1: motion picture technology. Right, pote photographic motion picture technology, because
Speaker 1: I guess you could have different definitions of what motion
Speaker 1: pictures are, but like you could, there were things that
Speaker 1: were sort of like a movie before there was ever
Speaker 1: a photography based movie. Right. So the first thing we
Speaker 1: want to talk about here is just sequential images and
Speaker 1: sequential art, and we could easily do an entire episode
Speaker 1: on sequential art. I I, for instance, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. If you're at all interested
Speaker 1: in comics and you haven't picked this up, uh, you
Speaker 1: definitely should. It's an insightful, uh comics based breakdown of
Speaker 1: all of this. So it it itself is in comic
Speaker 1: book form, and it discusses like how comics work, how
Speaker 1: they're composed, and its origins and sequential art. Can I
Speaker 1: admit a weird personal thing about my experience with comics,
Speaker 1: And I don't know why I do this. Often when
Speaker 1: I read a graphic novel or read a comic book,
Speaker 1: I find that I have to go back several pages
Speaker 1: and look at the pictures because I get into a
Speaker 1: rhythm of just reading the text in each frame and
Speaker 1: only barely noticing what the image rey is. And I
Speaker 1: find I have missed important plot elements because they were
Speaker 1: subtle visual things in the images, and I it's like
Speaker 1: I don't pay enough attention to that, and if I
Speaker 1: don't make myself, I don't do it. Now, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I I've never experienced quite the same thing, but I
Speaker 1: do find myself, especially if I'm reading a book that's
Speaker 1: particularly gorgeous, I have to remind myself to go back
Speaker 1: and look at the images, just to to take them
Speaker 1: in fully, because I'm I'm just kind of speeding. I'm
Speaker 1: speeding through them, and I'm not really focusing on all
Speaker 1: the work that went into each frame, which if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with, you know, with with some of the again,
Speaker 1: the more gorgeous graphic novels out there, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm doing a disservice to the book and and and
Speaker 1: also I'm not getting my money's worth out of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I feel that sometimes too, And I don't
Speaker 1: know why I have that tendency. I Mean, it would
Speaker 1: seem almost obvious and automatic that you should pay attention
Speaker 1: to the images, but sometimes the brain just doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way. Maybe maybe this book you mentioned would help. Yeah, I,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think it's a wonderful breakdown of
Speaker 1: comics and it's uh, it makes you appreciate them all
Speaker 1: the more. But it does get in a little bit
Speaker 1: into the history of sequential images sequential art. Uh. We
Speaker 1: should probably just summarize a bit and point out that
Speaker 1: the modern comic book, like what you're probably thinking of
Speaker 1: a comic book, and our idea of comics itself, largely
Speaker 1: this came out of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. So
Speaker 1: some of the earlier forms actually pre date the motion picture,
Speaker 1: such as the French comics of the eighteen thirties. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're going further back than that, when you're when
Speaker 1: you're asking yourself, well, what are the oldest examples of
Speaker 1: sequential art, I think about the fart scrolls, the fart scrolls. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: the Japanese farts and evil Japanese fart scrolls. I guess
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily always sequential, but but no, um, that
Speaker 1: is one of the one of the areas you can
Speaker 1: end up going is not not so much the fart
Speaker 1: scrolls themselves, but but the use of scrolls in Eastern traditions,
Speaker 1: illustrated scrolls, yeah, scroll paintings in India, scroll paintings in
Speaker 1: in East Asia, and Chinese traditions. There are there are
Speaker 1: also some traditions in which the scroll is presented umm,
Speaker 1: almost like uh, you know, a scrolling picture where it
Speaker 1: is it's there's there's a performance art to it as well.
Speaker 1: It's not just hey, look at these scrolls. It's like,
Speaker 1: gather around, we will present to you the scroll, um,
Speaker 1: and you know in the and so these are you know,
Speaker 1: epic paintings where you you just you know, scan your
Speaker 1: eyes across you you take it all in. So this
Speaker 1: doesn't in any kind of optical illusions since simulate motion,
Speaker 1: but it does allow you to cognitively put the motion
Speaker 1: together in your head. Right, Yeah, there's But then again
Speaker 1: that does get kind of difficult to write because we
Speaker 1: are creatures of the motion picture era making sense of
Speaker 1: sequential art and potential examples of sequential art from the past.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of these examples where it
Speaker 1: depends on who's who's arguing which side. For instance, looking
Speaker 1: at some of the uh, you know, the the the
Speaker 1: ancient cave illustrations, some make the argument that, well, we're
Speaker 1: looking at some form of sequential art. Others say absolutely not.
Speaker 1: The bio tapestry is another example where some make the
Speaker 1: argument it, yeah, what you're looking at here is sequential art,
Speaker 1: grizzly medieval sequential art. But again, in all of this,
Speaker 1: there is no actual illusion of movement. You know. I
Speaker 1: was just thinking that, on one hand, it makes sense
Speaker 1: too to just naturally sort something like an illustrated scroll
Speaker 1: or a comic book into a different category than than
Speaker 1: like a modern motion picture with a high frame rate,
Speaker 1: because one, at least, it seems to me, we just
Speaker 1: automatically perceive as continuous motion through this optical illusion, like
Speaker 1: the beta movement type things. Uh, and and that's just
Speaker 1: automatic and immediate, and whereas this other type of thing
Speaker 1: like a scroll or a comic book with successive images
Speaker 1: requires cognitive effort in the imagination to piece together into
Speaker 1: a visual narrative that seems continuous. I do assume that
Speaker 1: that's probably a difference that's hardwired into the brain. But
Speaker 1: I wonder, I mean, I wonder what sort of role
Speaker 1: conditioning and and sort of a culture of imagination in
Speaker 1: place there that if you don't have things like movies,
Speaker 1: if something like a comic book or a scroll with
Speaker 1: successive images could, through a sort of culture of imagination practice,
Speaker 1: feel more like a movie does to us, with like
Speaker 1: this kind of automatic conjuring of continuous visual sensation. Does
Speaker 1: that make any sense? Yeah? Again, this is one of
Speaker 1: those areas where you can you can really work kind
Speaker 1: of think yourself into a into a circle when you
Speaker 1: start trying trying to decipher how you are actually absorbing
Speaker 1: any particular form of media. You know, because you're getting
Speaker 1: into the you know, you're reading an action scene in
Speaker 1: a book and you're picturing it in your head um,
Speaker 1: and then you're then you're watching an action scene. You're
Speaker 1: reading an action scene on a comic book page. There's
Speaker 1: something similar going on, but with more visual data to
Speaker 1: inform what's happening in your mind. I read a book
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago called What We See When
Speaker 1: You Read? And I think the author's name was Peter
Speaker 1: MENDELSSOHND or something like that. But I thought it was
Speaker 1: a really interesting book. Basically it was just a sort
Speaker 1: of artistically put together extension of this question of what
Speaker 1: do you actually picture in your head as you read
Speaker 1: a piece of fiction. How does the imagination work? Um,
Speaker 1: Because we have this idea that like, Okay, when I
Speaker 1: read a book, I see the character, but it keeps
Speaker 1: asking all these probing questions about what exactly is it
Speaker 1: that you think you see? How do you see it?
Speaker 1: And it really makes you start to question the the
Speaker 1: experience of your own imagination. It's almost like the imagination
Speaker 1: can start to feel like a second order illusion within
Speaker 1: your mind. Yeah, and and I feel like I had
Speaker 1: my own experience. It's it's changed a lot over time.
Speaker 1: Like when I first started reading like full blown novels
Speaker 1: as a kid, I went to great lengths to sort
Speaker 1: of cast it in my head and decide I did
Speaker 1: like what actors were playing what characters, and then I
Speaker 1: would like focus on a consistent casting throughout my reading
Speaker 1: of the book. But for the most part, I got
Speaker 1: away from that as I got older. Now I'll only
Speaker 1: rarely do that, or or if there's some sort of
Speaker 1: film adaptation of a book or something, perhaps that'll kind
Speaker 1: of infect my my thinking along it. Um. I also
Speaker 1: remember there was a time when if I watched anything
Speaker 1: animated and then went and read a book, I would
Speaker 1: end up seeing an animated and and it would always
Speaker 1: kind of discourage me from reading. I'm like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'll read this tomorrow when the cartoons are out of
Speaker 1: my head. But I don't really experience that anymore. I
Speaker 1: wonder if does does the animation or the live action
Speaker 1: take precedence when you've seen both, Like, do you so
Speaker 1: you've seen live action and animation of the Hobbit and
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings, just one have precedence in
Speaker 1: your mind? It's It's weird because this is a great example,
Speaker 1: because there was a time, like the first time I
Speaker 1: read The Lord of the Rings, I went to great
Speaker 1: pains to not think about the animation right, and then
Speaker 1: in rereading The Hobbit to my son Um, I kind
Speaker 1: of forced myself to and I think by just distance,
Speaker 1: by having not seen them in a while, I was
Speaker 1: able to avoid like summoning just the images from the
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson films and hopefully kind of have something in between,
Speaker 1: something that we just kind of emerged more from from
Speaker 1: my mind as opposed from these visual adaptations. I guess
Speaker 1: there's some elements that are easier to dash than others,
Speaker 1: because I feel like I could read Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings without picturing most of the stuff from movies, except
Speaker 1: like Christopher Lee would be stuck there. Yeah, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have any sorrow moan but him. Here's another example.
Speaker 1: Um the Name of the rose By and Berto Eccho.
Speaker 1: The first time I read it, uh, like uh in
Speaker 1: high school. I think I was a big fan of
Speaker 1: the film adaptation, which I had seen previously. So of
Speaker 1: course I pictured brother William as being Sean Connery. But
Speaker 1: that's not really how he's described in the book. He's
Speaker 1: they say he's extremely tall and thin with red hair.
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah. So when I reread it, uh, And
Speaker 1: this was several years ago. But during that I actually
Speaker 1: had to I went to great pains to focus myself
Speaker 1: and not picture Sean Connery, but instead to picture something
Speaker 1: more along the lines of, say Jeremy Bratt or maybe
Speaker 1: Jeremy Irons. You know, someone who has actually played Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 1: or has you know, something more in line with with
Speaker 1: the like the field of a Home's character. Okay, I
Speaker 1: feel like we've gotten really far field. I think it's
Speaker 1: my fault. We should get back to simulations of the
Speaker 1: h of movement. Simulations creating this illusion of continuous motion uh,
Speaker 1: I guess after just mere sequential art, when they're started
Speaker 1: to be devices that could rapidly show us images, that
Speaker 1: would that would more automatically simulate motion. And one of
Speaker 1: the crazy things about these, uh, these these these technologies
Speaker 1: we're gonna discuss here is that they all emerge from
Speaker 1: the same time period. They're all products of the photographic
Speaker 1: era and and and products of the the birth of
Speaker 1: the motion picture. Well, yeah, I mean this is a
Speaker 1: time when people were thinking about the science of imagery
Speaker 1: and vision, not just in the invention of the photograph.
Speaker 1: And I remember it was in the eighteen thirties that
Speaker 1: Louis de Gerret and Henry Fox Talbot were inventing their
Speaker 1: their photography methods, like the Digera type and the what
Speaker 1: would eventually become Talbot's Cala type method. It was in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine that they both announced them. So in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty two, that is when we see a little
Speaker 1: invention that was known as the finn akistoscope. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so you you may have seen one of these in
Speaker 1: a museum or perhaps you own one yourself as a
Speaker 1: toy or a collectible. But it's a spinning cardboard disc
Speaker 1: attached vertically to a handle and in position radially around
Speaker 1: the center of the disk center, you have a subsequence
Speaker 1: of images that, when rotated and viewed through slits on
Speaker 1: an opposing disc, this creates the illusion of movement, like
Speaker 1: a very simple animation. Generally it's something like an individual
Speaker 1: jumping rope or an animal running, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: a person walking. Another example of this, pretty much the
Speaker 1: same device is the zoo trope from four, a cylindrical
Speaker 1: variation of the previous invention with viewing slits on the side,
Speaker 1: so it looks like a drum, and you rotate it
Speaker 1: and you stare through, and again you watch a very
Speaker 1: simple animation unfold. And these two you'll find them in
Speaker 1: a lot of like hands on science museums, you know,
Speaker 1: around the world. Yeah, and to be clear again, in
Speaker 1: the zoo trope, it's still images, but because you view
Speaker 1: them spinning rapidly, and because you view them in these
Speaker 1: slices through the slits, it simulates the continuous motion, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't perfectly simulate it. It's a little bit jerky.
Speaker 1: And one thing that's cool about that is that it
Speaker 1: creates a kind of creepy effect. I was going to
Speaker 1: mention that there are several scenes with a zootrope in
Speaker 1: the horror movie The Conjuring Too, where the one of
Speaker 1: Patrick Wilson. Well, he's in all the Conjurings, I think
Speaker 1: at least the first two. The second one is the
Speaker 1: one where he sings an Elvis song for some somebody
Speaker 1: thought that was a good idea, but uh, there's a
Speaker 1: sea where Patrick Wilson stares into one of these zootropes.
Speaker 1: He's looking through the slit says the thing is spinning,
Speaker 1: and he watches this strange man in a bowler hat
Speaker 1: and an umbrella walking around until suddenly, like there's a
Speaker 1: jump scare. A boogeyman with bad teeth does a jump
Speaker 1: scare on Patrick Wilson. But it's actually a very effective
Speaker 1: sort of set piece object for a horror film because
Speaker 1: there is a way in which it's obvious and not
Speaker 1: quite Their simulation of smooth motion is unsettling. I can't
Speaker 1: think if I've seen it used in another horror movie.
Speaker 1: Maybe it has been, but certainly other films have used
Speaker 1: the idea, if not of a zootrope, at least of
Speaker 1: a flickering presence or gait like I think of the
Speaker 1: ghost in The Ring. Basically, I think any presence that
Speaker 1: is almost but not quite smooth and continuous the way
Speaker 1: modern films are tends to be perceived, at least these days,
Speaker 1: is creepy or horrifying. And this could have to do
Speaker 1: with a version of the Uncanny Valley effect, which we've
Speaker 1: discussed on a couple of episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. But I it's clear that a lot of
Speaker 1: people perceive that type of motion or presence in a
Speaker 1: flickering way as creepy today. Well, I know with Samara
Speaker 1: in The Ring, I remember correctly they filmed the actor
Speaker 1: walking backwards and then reversed the footage, so she's walking
Speaker 1: towards the camera, but the motion, like we can tell
Speaker 1: there's something weird about the motion, the way that her
Speaker 1: limbs are moving. Yeah, but there is also like a
Speaker 1: like a like a flicker, like there's a glitch in
Speaker 1: a VHS tape or something. Uh, And so that that's
Speaker 1: a weird. So there's the weird gate and there's the
Speaker 1: flickering like you would see in the zootrope. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it would have been perceived as creepy in
Speaker 1: the same way back when these things were popular children's toys.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not, I don't know. Now another case, and
Speaker 1: this is a a really fun case to consider, is the
Speaker 1: flipbooka um, and uh, you know it's easy, especially with hindsight,
Speaker 1: to assume that the flipbook was surely invented, you know,
Speaker 1: well before uh these pretty previous advancements, But there's no
Speaker 1: evidence that it was really I mean, I made them
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. You have to imagine that
Speaker 1: people came up with this idea hundreds of years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can you I would guess like, all right,
Speaker 1: well you need you need paper, so you need the
Speaker 1: printed word and then you just need somebody board enough
Speaker 1: to start drawing like a just a cartoon horse in
Speaker 1: the corner, and then flip through them to create the
Speaker 1: illusion of movement. Uh, you know, the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that we all did as children, uh, in various notebooks
Speaker 1: and what have you. But yeah, when when you start
Speaker 1: looking at the history, it looks like, again, this is
Speaker 1: one of those things that, yes, it clearly could have
Speaker 1: been invented at any point, uh, in as long as
Speaker 1: that we had paper and uh, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was readily available. You know, we had some sort of
Speaker 1: flippable book at your disposal. But it seems like eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight is about as far back as we can
Speaker 1: go the flip book. That is when uh, British printer
Speaker 1: John Barnes Lena patented a flip book and uh, and
Speaker 1: that's the oldest known documentation of the flipbook. And I
Speaker 1: think a few things are illuminated here. Again, as we've
Speaker 1: discussed in uh in previous episode, the dangers of hindsight
Speaker 1: in considering the history of inventions, also just the true
Speaker 1: impact of motion picture technology and the way it's changed
Speaker 1: the way we think about images. And then of course
Speaker 1: the fact that for most of of of of history,
Speaker 1: paper wasn't something so readily wasted or even uh and
Speaker 1: even bound flippable books. I imagine we're too revered for,
Speaker 1: you know, for someone to make a bunch of scribbles
Speaker 1: in the corners, though I'm kind of surprised a monk
Speaker 1: never made one in the Middle Ages, like doing an
Speaker 1: illuminated manuscript, Well, it's entirely possible that it that it
Speaker 1: did and it didn't survive, Like that's possible, there's just
Speaker 1: no evidence. Um. I think there have been some cases
Speaker 1: for certain sequential art in illuminated manuscripts, but not not
Speaker 1: a flipbook, nothing that creates the actual illusion of movement.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Yeah, hindsight bias exactly. All Right, I
Speaker 1: think we need to take another break, but then we
Speaker 1: will be back to discuss a little more about the
Speaker 1: technology that directly preceded the motion picture. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So when you think about a motion picture camera, in
Speaker 1: order to do what it does, it has to take
Speaker 1: a lot of photos in very quick succession that can
Speaker 1: be played back in very quick succession, right, in order
Speaker 1: to get the level of frame rate that actually looks
Speaker 1: like motion to our eyes. So how how do we
Speaker 1: get there? Like? What was there between the Daguero type
Speaker 1: or the Cala type, you know, these single exposure camera
Speaker 1: shots and the actual movie camera. Yeah. I can't help
Speaker 1: but use the metaphor of of guns and weapons of
Speaker 1: war when thinking about them, because certainly a Daguerreo type
Speaker 1: would be kind of like an old timey canon, right,
Speaker 1: Who's a pain to load it, to aim it, to
Speaker 1: fire it, and then you'd have to go through the
Speaker 1: whole rigamarole of loading it again. Uh So you know
Speaker 1: you're you're dealing with with lengthy exposure times and some
Speaker 1: of the earliest cameras. Right. But but but as the
Speaker 1: but from a motion picture camera. To function as a
Speaker 1: motion picture camera, you essentially have to have a machine gun.
Speaker 1: It's just just taking picture after picture after picture after picture.
Speaker 1: And so one thing that immediately occurs to me is
Speaker 1: that you've got to somehow deal with the change in
Speaker 1: the media on which it's recorded. Because the earliest photos
Speaker 1: were taken on on media that had to be sort
Speaker 1: of specially prepared and loaded up one at a time.
Speaker 1: How how how could you load a camera for rapid
Speaker 1: exposures of many images? Yeah, and when we're talking rapid exposure,
Speaker 1: we're talking expacture exposure times of a fraction of a second,
Speaker 1: a long way from those hour long exposures that we
Speaker 1: were talking about and in previous episodes for photography, by
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy the exposure time was down to one second
Speaker 1: and ultimately one one thousands of a thousandth of a second,
Speaker 1: which is fast enough for for motion pictures of course,
Speaker 1: But how do you get all the like you obviously
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be using like metal plates for that, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: so here's the here's the thing. One of the earlier
Speaker 1: approaches to this problem simply involved using multiple cameras. You know,
Speaker 1: think again about the cannon where you can't possibly create
Speaker 1: a single old timing cannon that's gonna fire uh six
Speaker 1: cannon balls in the space of a few seconds. It's impossible.
Speaker 1: Get your six cannons. You get six cannons, you line
Speaker 1: them up, you have them, you know, you know, in
Speaker 1: the ship, right, and then you just fire them all
Speaker 1: off in succession. That's exactly the approach that was taken
Speaker 1: early on by photographers such as Edward my Bridge. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: famous for the his running a Horse images from seven
Speaker 1: He used a battery of twelve cameras to pull this off.
Speaker 1: And I guess we'll explain more about that in a minute. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: before we came in here, Robert, you were you were
Speaker 1: telling me some strange details about the life of Edward
Speaker 1: my Bridge that I have never heard before. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit about him in the
Speaker 1: History of Photography by Beaumont new Hall and and um,
Speaker 1: my Bridge is a fascinating character. Um do you know
Speaker 1: why he spells his name the way he does? Yes,
Speaker 1: so he wanted he wanted his name to sound more
Speaker 1: archaic because he was born Edward James, Uh Muggeridge and Uh.
Speaker 1: He wanted a fancier show name essentially, so it's Edward
Speaker 1: in his name is spelled like ed weird, yes, and
Speaker 1: then uh, and then my bridge is spelled m U
Speaker 1: y b r I d g E. So earlier in
Speaker 1: his life he was he was born eighteen thirty. He
Speaker 1: would die in nineteen o four, but earlier in his
Speaker 1: life he was a bookseller. But then he sustained severe
Speaker 1: cranial injuries in a runaway stagecoach crash in eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: which it was like a brutal accident, actually killed one
Speaker 1: of the passengers and injured just about everybody else too.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know, severe cranial injuries required a good
Speaker 1: year of treatment uh, and he was forever changed by it.
Speaker 1: Possibly there's possibly the reason for some of his emotional
Speaker 1: and erratic behavior later in life. But during his recovery
Speaker 1: he took up photography. Now and then this in photography
Speaker 1: is where he would he would really make his name.
Speaker 1: But as a there was just a note about a
Speaker 1: murder trial that took place in the history of photography,
Speaker 1: so I had to look into it a little bit
Speaker 1: more and the and this is the story. Basically, in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two he married Flora shall Cross Stone, but
Speaker 1: then he caught wind of a former lover that lived
Speaker 1: in the area and Major Harry Larkins, and he got
Speaker 1: it in his head that that that Larkins was the
Speaker 1: father of Stone's son, Floredo. So my Bridge went to
Speaker 1: Larkins house, confronted him at the front door, and shot
Speaker 1: him dead on his doorstep. Yeah, uh he or he
Speaker 1: shot him and then he died later that day. At anyway,
Speaker 1: fatally shot him on on his doorstep. And so my
Speaker 1: Bridge was accused of the murder, and the defense ended
Speaker 1: up leaning on his previous brain injury, saying, look, you
Speaker 1: know he was in this horrible accident and it it
Speaker 1: changed the way his his brain works. And and they
Speaker 1: brought in an expert testimony, They brought in people to
Speaker 1: speak to say, yeah, he was a totally different person
Speaker 1: before this took place. And they were going for, you know,
Speaker 1: an insanity plea, which I've read that that my Bridge
Speaker 1: apparently undercut this himself when when he was questioned. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, the judge ended up throwing out the
Speaker 1: insanity pla and then acquitted my Bridge on the grounds
Speaker 1: of justifiable homicide. That was a different time. Yeah, it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: because clearly there was no questioning based on what I
Speaker 1: was reading that he killed this guy, he murdered this
Speaker 1: guy on on his doorstep. But but yeah, he was
Speaker 1: he was acquitted. Uh, and it was considered justifiable homicide. UM.
Speaker 1: It was an important case apparently because it serves as
Speaker 1: like an historic forensic neurology case and neurology forensic neurology
Speaker 1: neurology defense. Uh. It would also, by the way, go
Speaker 1: on to become an opera. Philip Glass would compose an
Speaker 1: opera based on these events titled The Photographer. But It's
Speaker 1: just a yeah, really tragic episode. Uh. Flora petition for divorce,
Speaker 1: had to do it twice and was finally granted it.
Speaker 1: She died in eighteen seventy five, and then my Bridge
Speaker 1: had the son placed in an orphanage and Florida ended
Speaker 1: up working his entire life as a ranch hand and
Speaker 1: a gardener, and he himself died into in a pedestrian
Speaker 1: traffic accident. But but my Bridge had established himself by
Speaker 1: this point as a as a photographic pioneer. Former Governor
Speaker 1: of California, Leland Stanford had commissioned him to photograph his racehorses.
Speaker 1: Work that was interrupted by the trial, but the resulting
Speaker 1: images were widely published for their detailed depictions of horse locomotion.
Speaker 1: And this was the idea of using multiple cameras set
Speaker 1: up in succession to to capture images very rapidly back
Speaker 1: to back. Yeah, run the horse pass this battery of cameras,
Speaker 1: fire the cameras off, and then we can look and
Speaker 1: see are the horses legs actually all coming off the
Speaker 1: ground as it runs across the field. Apparently this is
Speaker 1: a controversy in the eighteen seventies, like people are are
Speaker 1: actually highly concerned to know whether the horses ever completely
Speaker 1: airborne or always has at least one hoof on the ground, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so these images were since it were a sensation,
Speaker 1: they were widely published for their detailed depiction of horse locomotion.
Speaker 1: And uh And in eighteen eighty my Bridge invented what
Speaker 1: he called a zoo gyroscope or a zoo practice scope
Speaker 1: to project his pictures on the screen. So you know,
Speaker 1: in all of this from capturing locomotion to projecting images.
Speaker 1: He was highly influential. Like he he influenced a number
Speaker 1: of individuals who would go on to continue to to
Speaker 1: tinker with and uh and innovate uh motion picture technology.
Speaker 1: I'd heard about his his accomplishments in photography before, I
Speaker 1: had never heard about like the murder or any of this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a brutal and sad story because it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those where you're you're dealing again with
Speaker 1: with a brain injury as well, so it's not just
Speaker 1: a situation. And I mean, we've talked a bit about
Speaker 1: this and stuff to blow your mind when you really
Speaker 1: start breaking down like neurological realities. A lot of our
Speaker 1: judgments about people's behavior are not so cut and dry,
Speaker 1: but this one I feel feels especially problematic. Um first
Speaker 1: of all because of the brain injuries is sustained, and
Speaker 1: then secondly because it's just like he clearly murdered somebody
Speaker 1: in cold blood and um and was acquitted. So it's uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say it's a tragic, tragic episode. But like I said,
Speaker 1: he influenced a number of individuals, including in the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies French physiologists Etna Jules Mara, who lived eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: through nineteen o four. Yes, the same the same years
Speaker 1: that that my Bridge lived, and they both died in
Speaker 1: May of nineteen o four, one week apart. So it's
Speaker 1: just pure dumb luck. It is one of those things
Speaker 1: that suggesting my Bridge did it. No, but it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. When I was putting together my notes,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, did I just write down the
Speaker 1: wrong dates for this individual's life because they're exactly the
Speaker 1: dates of the previous individual. No, they just happened to
Speaker 1: have been born and to have died in the exact
Speaker 1: same years. But anyway, Um Murray he invented what he
Speaker 1: would call the chrono photographic gun to capture the movements
Speaker 1: of birds in flight. So he set out He's one
Speaker 1: of these individuals who, like he was really going after
Speaker 1: the science first, Like he was, he really wanted to
Speaker 1: to break down how a bird is flying, to capture
Speaker 1: the visual details that are that are happening too fast
Speaker 1: for the human eye to observe, and so he was
Speaker 1: developing the photographic technology to make it happen. Inspired by
Speaker 1: my bridges work with horses, and this is a wonderful
Speaker 1: contraption to look up, because it really did look like
Speaker 1: a gun. Uh. It imprinted twelve photos a second on
Speaker 1: a rotating glass plate. Uh. And it had it had
Speaker 1: like a butt, you know, the shoulder, It had a
Speaker 1: trigger like it was it was it was built on
Speaker 1: the like the stock of a rifle. So there are
Speaker 1: these wonderful old illustrations of a of a gentleman, presumably
Speaker 1: Murray himself, you know, going down on one knee and
Speaker 1: holding up the uh, this fabulous photographic gun and aiming
Speaker 1: it at birds in flight. And and with this device again,
Speaker 1: he's doing what my bridge did, but he's doing it
Speaker 1: with a single instrument, yes, with one camera. So this
Speaker 1: is a step closer actually to the idea of a
Speaker 1: movie camera. Right. Again, only twelve images here, So all
Speaker 1: he could do, and all he was setting out to do,
Speaker 1: of course, was to capture the movements of a bird.
Speaker 1: And uh and the and the the images that this uh,
Speaker 1: this camera gun produced are are pretty impressive. Like they
Speaker 1: are taking locomotion that is happening at a scale that
Speaker 1: the human eye can't really perceive, in the human mind
Speaker 1: can't fully process, and it's breaking it down so that
Speaker 1: we can analyze it and this, uh, this continue to
Speaker 1: inspire that both of these cases continue to inspire other
Speaker 1: individuals to do the same thing with human locomotion, with
Speaker 1: the locomotion of various animals. Uh, and you know, really
Speaker 1: taking on the scientific task of using this new technology
Speaker 1: to better understand what is transpiring in reality. Well, as
Speaker 1: we were talking about at the very beginning, it makes
Speaker 1: me imagine an alternate history in which movies come about,
Speaker 1: but they're only considered like a tool of documenting reality
Speaker 1: in order to study it, and they never get repurposed
Speaker 1: into like any form of storytelling. Yeah, or you could
Speaker 1: imagine an alternate world where where it's prohibited, where where
Speaker 1: cinematic technology, photographic technology is only for uh, for science
Speaker 1: and truth, never for for for narrative, never for transformers. Alright, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and cut this episode off here,
Speaker 1: but we will be back to finish with a part
Speaker 1: two on motion picture technology. That's right, we'll get into
Speaker 1: a great Edison rivalry that doesn't even involve Nikola Tesla. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, Edison will definitely play a role, as
Speaker 1: will Kodak as as we set up in previous episodes,
Speaker 1: and and we'll discuss more about just the impact of
Speaker 1: like how how motion pictures were initially perceived and how
Speaker 1: people reacted to this in this new medium, and then
Speaker 1: again how it's just changed the way we understand reality
Speaker 1: in the passing of time and our our own sense
Speaker 1: of self in the meantime. If you want to check
Speaker 1: out more episodes of Invention, head on over to in
Speaker 1: Invention show dot com. That's where we'll find all the episodes.
Speaker 1: If you want to discuss episodes of Invention, a really
Speaker 1: cool place to do it is to head on over
Speaker 1: to the old Facebook and look for the Facebook group
Speaker 1: um the Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module. That's
Speaker 1: where folks talk about episodes of Stuff to Bow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: which Joe and I also host, but also episodes of
Speaker 1: Invention are discussed there as well. Big thanks to Scott
Speaker 1: Benjamin for research assistance with this episode, and to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer, Tor Harrison. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback about this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,