Eadweard James Muybridge was born in 1830 in Kingston-on-Thames, England. In 1852, he moved to America during the California gold rush. He was truly a jack-of-all-trades when it came to photography. He took panoramic photographs of San Francisco that were 26 feet long; he was the first to photograph a solar eclipse; and he invented a precursor of the film projector. Much of his work shows the movement of people or animals. His major achievement was capturing photographic proof that, at full gallop, all four of a horse's hooves briefly lose contact with the ground. Today, that might not sound like quite a feat. I mean, your digital cameras today have shutter speeds that are amazing (my Canon T2i can capture at 1/4000 of a sec). But back when glass plates still had to be exposed in a wet collodion process for at least 10 seconds, how do you capture a moment that lasts less than 1/1000 of a second? It wasn't easy, but with the help of John D. Issacs, working constantly on improving shutters and light-sensitive emulsions, he finally caught the moment on film in 1877.
It was just 5 years later that he wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that photographing the finishes of horse races could exclude judges' errors. Today, photo finishes are completely mainstream...and now you know who to thank.
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