Accidental invention: movies born from bets
Nowadays, movies, as a form of mass entertainment, have been integrated into our lives. But did you know that movies were originally invented to referee a bet? Perhaps we have that bet to thank for the movies it brought us.
One day in 1872, in a hotel in California, USA, Stanford and Cohen had a fierce dispute: Do the hooves of a horse touch the ground when it runs? Stanford believed that all four hooves of a running horse were in the air at the moment of leaping; Cohen believed that one hoof always touched the ground when a horse ran. The outcome of the dispute could not convince anyone, so the Americans resorted to betting to resolve the dispute. They invited a horse training expert to make a decision. However, the referee could not decide who was right and who was wrong. This is normal, because it is difficult to see how the hooves of a fast-running horse move with the human eye alone.
After the referee’s friend, British photographer Muybridge, learned about this incident, he said that he could give it a try. He placed 24 cameras on one side of the runway, lined up in a row, with the camera lenses pointed at the runway; on the other side of the runway, he drove 24 wooden stakes, and tied a thin rope to each wooden stake. A rope was stretched across the runway and attached to the shutter of each camera on the opposite side.
After everything was ready, Muybridge brought a beautiful horse and let it gallop from one end of the track to the other. When the horse race passed through this area, 24 wires were tripped and broken in turn, and the shutters of 24 cameras were pulled in turn to take 24 photos. Muybridge edited the photos in order. The movements of each two adjacent photos are very different, and they form a coherent photo strip. Based on this set of photos, the referee finally saw that when the horse was running, one hoof always landed on the ground and would not fly in the air, and thus decided that Cohen had won.
It stands to reason that the story should end here, but this bet and the peculiar method of its judgment have aroused great interest. Muybridge showed people the photo tape of the galloping horse again and again. Once, someone unconsciously pulled the photo tape quickly, and a strange scene appeared in front of them: the still horses in each photo were stacked into a moving horse, and it actually "lived"!
Biologist Malai got inspiration from this. He tried to use photos to study the movement patterns of animals. Of course, we must first solve the problem of continuous photography, because Muybridge's photography method is too troublesome and not practical enough. Marais was a smart man. After several years of unremitting efforts, he finally produced a lightweight "fixed film continuous camera" in 1888. This was the origin of modern cameras. Since then, many inventors have turned their attention to the development of movie cameras. On December 28, 1895, the French Lumière brothers screened the film "The Arrival of the Train" for the first time in the "Grand Café" in Paris using a projection and photography machine they invented, marking the official birth of cinema.
Of course, the birth of film at the end of the 19th century was fundamentally a comprehensive product of the combination of science, technology and art. Before the birth of film, many inventors had already done hard work and basic work for the birth of film. contribution. In addition to the scientific inventors mentioned above, there are many more, such as the great American inventor Edison. The bet between Stanford and Cohen was like a catalyst for great changes in the integration of these sciences and technologies, which quickly led to the emergence and production of comprehensive film technology, making the great art of film knock on the door of the 20th century.