Posts Tagged Animals

Photo Credit: Vern C. Gorst/University of Washington Libraries

Girl wearing hat and pants seated in the grass holding a lamb and puppy, possibly Washington, ca. 1929-1932

Muybridge sequence of a horse galloping (Source).

In 1872, Leland Stanford, an industrialist and horseman, commissioned English photographer Eadweard Muybridge to help determine whether a horse ever lifts all four feet completely off the ground at any given time during a trot or gallop.  While trying to figure out Stanford’s question Muybridge invented a motion picture projector and new photographic techniques.

Photo Credits: Wikimedia Commons/Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

After over five years of experiments and engineering, Stanford finally got his answer when Muybridge was able to build a camera that was up to the job. Not just one camera, but a dozen of them!

Muybridge lined all 12 cameras alongside the track. As the horse passed the cameras, it would trigger strings that would activate the shutters one at a time and in sequence. Among the resulting images was Stanford’s answer: Yes, all four hooves leave the ground, briefly, during a trot.

Not completely satisfied, Stanford wanted to try it again but with a galloping horse to see if it the result was the same. In June 1878, Muybridge repeated the exercise with a galloping horse. However, this time he doubled the amount of cameras from 12 to 24 and placed them 27 inches apart.

The horse, Sallie Gardner, kicked the camera strings as she galloped by. In order to reflect as much light as possible, the track was lined with cloth sheets.

The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge. “Sallie Gardner,” owned by Leland Stanford; running at a 1:40 gait over the Palo Alto track, June 19, 1878. Photo Credit: Library of Congress

In order to display the images, Muybridge created what is considered to be the first movie projector – a Zoopraxiscope. He would copy the images in the form of silhouettes onto glass disks. When rotated, the images appeared as if in motion and one rotation lasted about 3 seconds.

While Sallie Gardner at a Gallop was an experiment, it was also one of the earliest silent films. Muybridge achieved many impressive photographic feats during his lifetime and was considered a pioneer in photographic studies of motion and motion picture projection.

[Zim's Note: Since I could not find any place within this post to organically include the following two "trivia" facts about Muybridge and Stanford, I decided to just include it here as a footnote.

• Muybridge literally got away with murder in 1874. He was prosecuted and acquitted in the murder of his young wife's lover, Harry Larkyns, a San Francisco Post drama critic. The jury found that the killing was a justifiable homicide under "unwritten law."
• In 1885, Leland Stanford founded Stanford University along with his wife Jane as a memorial for their only child Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid fever at the age of fifteen. Stanford University's official name is actually "Leland Stanford Junior University."]

Sources
Leslie, Mitchell, “The Man Who Stopped Time,” Stanford Alumni Magazine, May/June 2001.
Joe Rayment, “Eadweard J. Muybridge – one of the original men in motion – celebrated with a Google Doodle,” National Post, April 9, 2012.
Joe Stanford, “Cantor exhibit showcases motion-study photography,” Stanford Report, February 12, 2003.
“Sallie Gardner at a Gallop,” San Francisco Museum.
“The Birth of the University,” Stanford University.

Photo Credit: California State Parks

“A senator got up today in Congress and called his fellow senators sons of wild jackasses. Now, if you think the senators were hot, imagine how the jackasses must feel.”

- Will Rogers, American cowboy, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor

Photo Credit: Frances Benjamin Johnston/Smithsonian Institute

A group of school children in 1899 viewing the first bison at the National Zoological Park – commonly known as the National Zoo – part of the Smithsonian Institute.

Photo Credit: Burgert Brothers/State Archives of Florida (Florida Memory)

Horse-drawn ambulance in Tampa, Florida around 1912.

Photo Credit: The Field Museum Library

A zookeeper smokes a pipe while feeding the bears at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois, 1900.

Photo Credit: The Field Museum Library

Zookeeper smoking his pipe mouth and feeding two bears who are standing upright at Lincoln Park Zoo.

Photo Credit: George Bradford Brainerd/ Brooklyn Museum Collection

Boy playing tug with a dog near the Iron Pier at Coney Island, Brooklyn, ca. 1885.

Photo Credit: Grand Canyon NPS

One woman sits on a mule with another tries to push them both up the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon, circa 1910. Looks like it might be a long trip up…

William McKinley by Courtney Art Studio, 1896 (source) & a yellow-headed parrot at the Vancouver Aquarium, Canada (source).

President William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, had a Yellow-headed Mexican parrot named “Washington Post.” Reportedly, the parrot was quite patriotic. When McKinley whistled the beginning of “Yankee Doodle” the parrot would complete it.

Sarah D. Bunting, “Presidential pet stories,” Animal Nation, February 22, 2012.

The “Charlie” Horse in the game “Operation” (Source)

Definition: A charley horse is the nickname given to a cramp or pulled muscle in the leg. The strong muscle cramp can sneak up suddenly and last for a few seconds to several painful minutes. The causes are not always known, but it can be caused by several things such as overusing the muscle through exercise or injury, cold water, blood flow problems, not enough potassium and even being dehydrated.

Origin: Just as the reasons behind getting charley horses are not always known, the origin of the nickname is debated. It dates back to the 1880s and was originally a American baseball slang term. When Bill Brandt, a baseball official, was asked about the origin of the term, he responded with a story he was told by Mr. J. G. T. Spink of St. Louis’ Sporting News of a lame horse used in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

They had a lame horse named Charley whose regular work was pulling things around the baseball park. . . . Charley’s performance was to limp around the grassless surface of the baselines on the diamond dragging a dust-brush. This picture was so deeply stamped in the ballplayers’ consciousness that when a member of the team developed a minor cripplement in the lower extremities due to a slightly pulled tendon or muscle bruise, his teammates called him “Charley Horse” instead of his right name.

Another sources states that the earliest known use of the term was on July 17, 1886 by the Boston Globe, but does not mention a horse but rather a baseball player who originated it himself. Another story states it was about a completely different horse not used for baseball. A 1907 Washington Post story,  found by the American Dialect Society, stated that “charley horse” was used in reference to pitcher Charley “Old Hoss” Radbourne who often suffered with cramps during games in the 1880s.

Whether “Charley” was named after a horse, baseball player or a figment of someone’s imagination, the slang word stuck. So much so that it was included in the 1965 Milton Bradley game “Operation” (spelled as “Charlie”) and worth 200 points if successfully “removed.”

Sources
David Shulman, “Whence ‘Charley Horse’?, American Speech, Vol. 24: No. 2 (April 1949), 100-104.
Dave Wilton, “charley horse,” wordorigins.org
Michael Quinion, ”Charley Horse,” worldwidewords.org
“Muscle Cramps,” webMD.com

Photo Credit: Geroge Whitneck/Caribou Public Library

“A snow roller pulled by horses owned by John Hamilton. The driver is Albert White. A road roller was an improvement over a snowplow because it packed down the snow on the roads to make a wide, hard, smooth surface. In a snow storm, banks made from plowing a road trapped the blowing snow and the road would drift in. The road roller did not make large snow banks. Rolled roads also were wider than plowed ones, allowing cars to more easily pass one another and did not confine teams of horses or upset sleighs, pungs or sleds. A road roller was made from planks bolted to a drum-like frame.”

Photo Credit: George Eastman House Collection

Calf pulling boy in sled, ca. 1915. Having grown up on a farm, I am very familiar with people using many things to pull sleds. However, never a cow, or in this case, a calf….

[Zim's Note: Today is the 80th Anniversary of the premiere of King Kong. I thought this was a fitting tribute to the classic film.]

(Source)

“Every time I’m in New York I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there.”

- Fay Wray, actress who portrayed the original Ann Darrow in King Kong (1933). King Kong comes to love and protect Ann Darrow and famously carries her to the top of the Empire State Building.

Two days after her death at age 96 on August 8, 2004, the lights on the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes in her memory.

Photo Credit: Chip Clark/Smithsonian Institute

“Visitors building a snow rabbit on The Mall with the Smithsonian Institution Building in the background, March 1978.”