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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.

While the philosopher was