1873 | Photography
Photography
German photochemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, 39, discovers that adding certain dyes to photographic emulsions will increase their sensitivity.
Gelatin emulsions go on sale at London to permit any photographer "to prepare dry plates equal in sensitiveness to the best wet plates by simply pouring on the glass an emulsion and allowing it to dry," but the product introduced in July by local photographer John Burgess is not a commercial success.
Central Pacific Railroad president and former California governor Leland Stanford asks English-born photographer Eadweard Muybridge, 43, to determine photographically whether all four feet of a trotting horse are off the ground at the same time at some point in the animal's stride (Stanford has wagered that they are) and whether its forelegs are straight when they touch the ground or whether the heel hits first (see Ducos du Hauron, 1864). Owner of the famous racehorse Occident, Stanford invites Muybridge to his 700-acre estate at Palo Alto, California, and although his experiments will be interrupted by a brief murder trial after Muybridge shoots and kills his wife's lover he will set up his apparatus (huge wooden boxes on stands, a timing mechanism, and wet plates) beside Stanford's trotting track and begin work. Occident covers 20 feet in a single stride that lasts scarcely half a second; to stop the motion, Muybridge will use a mechanical shutter triggered by a spring as the horse passes (see 1878).