The Man Who Stopped Time: The Illuminating Story of Eadweard Muybridge ― Pioneer Photographer, Father of the Motion Picture, Murderer

by Brian Clegg

The photographs of Eadweard Muybridge are immediately familiar to us. Less familiar is the dramatic personal story of this seminal and wonderfully eccentric Victorian pioneer, now brought to life for the first time in this engaging and thoroughly entertaining biography. His work is the first icons of the modern visual age. Men, women, boxers, wrestlers, racehorses, elephants and camels frozen in time, captured in the act of moving, fighting, galloping, living. Scarcely a day goes by without their derivate use somewhere in today's media. And if most of us have seen Muybridge's distinctive stop-motion photographs, all of us have seen the fruit of his extraordinary technological today's cinema and television. But it is his personal life that possesses all the ingredients of a classic non-fiction a passionately driven man struggling against the odds; dire treachery and shocking betrayal; a cast of larger-than-life characters set against a backdrop of San Francisco and the Far West in its most turbulent and dangerous era; a profusion of scientific and artistic advances and discoveries, one hotly following on another; the nervous intensity of two spectacular courtroom dramas (one pitting Muybridge against the richest man in the land and staring ruin in the face, the other sees him fighting for his life). And for the opening act, a foul murder on a dark and stormy night. Skillfully articulating the fascinating history of a now ubiquitous technology, author Brian Clegg combines ingredients from science and biography to create an eminently readable, fast-paced, and surprising story.

Genres: Photography, History, Film, Nonfiction

276 pages, Hardcover

Published February 26, 2007

About the author

Brian's latest books, Ten Billion Tomorrows and How Many Moons does the Earth Have are now available to pre-order. He has written a range of other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, A Brief History of Infinity, Build Your Own Time Machine and Dice World.

Along with appearances at the Royal Institution in London he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare. It has since been widely applied to problem solving and decision making in business.

Brian has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous publications, including Nature, The Guardian, PC Week, Computer Weekly, Personal Computer World, The Observer, Innovative Leader, Professional Manager, BBC History, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. His books have been translated into many languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Thai and even Indonesian.

Reviews

[Michael Wadsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who doesn't have that one friend that seems to know everything? The one that when posed with a question, can give an answer with authority and assurance, but when doing so strays from topic to topic to the point where you can't remember the original matter. When done properly, no one notices the diversion and is completely engrossed and entertained by the monologue.

This is the writing style of Brian Clegg, the author of The Man who Stopped Time. While written to be a biography of Eadweard Muybridge, the pioneer photographer and father of the motion picture, the topics range from the function of the brain in assembling and filling in the blanks when posed with a rapid series of photographs of a moving animal, to the mechanics of the human eyeball.

Clegg explains how calcium lights, or "limelights" enabled the projection of images onto larger screens, and how the QWERTY keyboard came into being and how Muybridge was used to publicize the Guatemalan coffee industry.

I was completely drawn in at every page even though Muybridge's story wasn't all that compelling. He murdered his wife's lover, had his own building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and placed himself in the company of Thomas Edison and California senator Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University.

I loved this book and the writing style was easy to read and follow. If you're in to technology, photography or the history of cinematography, I can highly recommend this book.

[Rick Elinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reread this biography of Muybridge after reading Delisle's graphical biography of Muybridge. There were things here that were useful to see, but there were problems. Delisle's graphical treatment was certainly more approachable and fun. A major plus of Clegg's book are the inclusion of many direct quotes from Muybridge, Leland Stanford, the lawyers at Muybridge's murder trial, and various contemporary reviewers of Muybridge's presentations and innovations in photography.

There are two problems. First, Clegg often goes off on tangents about other inventions such as Edison's light bulb or Babbage's difference calculating machine. These seemed like padding.

More importantly except for the dust jacket, there are practically no illustrations of Muybridge's work or of the mechanisms he used to capture his images. Clegg often gives detailed descriptions of the innovations such as lighting, shuttering, and preparation and developing of photographic plates, but a few diagrams and pictures would make these descriptions so much easier to understand. More importantly, there are almost none of Muybridge's photographs. Common examples would be the panorama of San Francisco, the interiors of the Stanford mansion, Yosemite, and of course, a selection of images from animals and humans in motion. How can you write a book about Muybridge with so few examples of his work?

[Comeauxreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a great premise but reads like a textbook. I loved the information! There were so many things that I did not know about the beginnings of the motion picture camera. A tragic tale, but worth the read.

[Chester Lampman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject and read but not exactly a page turner. likely won't appeal to a casual reader, but anyone with an interest in the early development of photography and capturing & eventually projecting motion, it's worth the time.

[Eugene Miya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a biography which starts in the middle of Muybridge's life (like Tarantino shot Pulp Fiction), during his dramatic murder of his wife's lover. I'm not certain that this is the best way to write a biography but am open to this format.

I own copies of two prior Muybridge biographies: Robert Bartlett Haas's Muybridge: Man in Motion (which I really like) and Rebecca Solnit's River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West and attend one of her author events. Personally, I like Haas as the best, but may have to do with precedence. The value that Clegg adds is that Haas and Solnit are Californians writing from the perspective of California (and world) history, and Clegg is a Brit who can cover aspects of Muybridge's earlier life better. Haas has a comparatively linear, academic narrative (it's Univ. of California Press, and no longer in print). Owning copies of Muybridge photo collections (like Muybridge's Complete Human and Animal Locomotion, Vol. II: All 781 Plates from the 1887 "Animal Locomotion") is also useful.

Whereas the personal story of Muybridge's acquittal for murder speaks of a different time, the keywords in his life were "unsuspended transport" and the horse Occident (you can find a State Historic monument at Stanford University for this stop motion work). Clegg adds personal value, but person most qualified to review any of these books is probably Harold Edgerton who developed strobe photography. Edgerton didn't think much of Muybridge's life (it was an earlier time and Muybridge was also noted for his still photography of Yosemite and other landscapes prior to photographers like Ansel Adams). And I think Dr. Edgerton also credits another French photographer whose name escapes me (maybe Gjon Mili).

Clegg could have also related Muybridge to influences in painting, typically Duchamp, or comparisons to O.J. Simpson (until later crimes). Clegg might be considered a supplement to other biographers, but in my opinion he's not the strongest biographer on the topic and working from the UK may have a few disadvantages in the latter portions of Muybridge's life.

[Jack Metier · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Muybridge ceases to exist as the answer to a trivia question and becomes a full-fledged human being.

[Jamey]

I'm pretty sure this one of my favorite book titles EVER! Mostly because the first time I checked this out I didn't even notice until I actually had it in my hand.