A. Burchill, Form IV Arts.

One day in 1872, on the racecourse at Sacramento, California, the Governor of the State of California and his friends had an argument over a galloping horse If the Governor, who said a galloping horse lifted all four feet off the ground at one point, and his friends who said it did not, had not backed their argument by substantial bets, the invention of Cinematography - the way of showing photographs of moving objects - may have been delayed for several years.

The Governor decided to settle the dispute by photographic means; and so he consulted a well-known photographer, Mr. Edward Muybridge, of Kingston-on-Thames. Muybridge warned him that it might be an expensive failure, but he insisted.

Muybridge set to work on a racecourse by putting up twenty four cameras in a row, a foot from each other, and he attached a thread to each shutter, running across the track. As a backing for the scene, he set up a long white screen. Although improbable, the undertaking was a success. As the horse galloped down the track, it broke the threads in turn, and operated all twenty four camera shutters. For the complete experiment, half a million photographic plates were used. Times of exposure ranged down to 1/5000 second.

The result showed a series of pictures of a galloping horse, showing its stride at different points - and proved by general opinion, the horse did lift all four feet at one point! The Governor had won his bet, but at an expense of about £40,000 for Muybridge's experiment.