New York in motion c. 1884-1904 by Wallace G. Levison

Colonel Blimp · Oct 21, 2017

Some truly amazing photographs from the late 19th century by a photographer I didn't know http://mashable.com/2017/10/21/new-york-in-motion/?utm_cid=hp-hh-pri#_fZV6vrZ1mqN

pentaxuser · Oct 21, 2017

Thanks for the link. He was obviously keen on people jumping - presumably to test out how well he could capture motion. Answer: very well. What brought home the age of these excellent prints to me was not the date of 1886 but the thought that these children were already approaching middle age when the U.S. entered the First World War a hundred years ago

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass · Oct 21, 2017

Things must have been really jumping then.

Louis Nargi · Oct 22, 2017

Very interesting enjoyed them thanks

Helios 1984 · Oct 22, 2017

Windgardium Leviosa!

GRHazelton · Oct 22, 2017

I'd had the impression that stopping motion other than in the studio with powerful lights was virtually impossible in the 1880s. Do we have any technical info on these remarkable shots?

Colonel Blimp · Oct 23, 2017

GRHazelton said:
I'd had the impression that stopping motion other than in the studio with powerful lights was virtually impossible in the 1880s. Do we have any technical info on these remarkable shots?

I did a bit of "research" (thanks to Google) and I found something interesting in the book The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson by Paul Spehr, page 297. Levison presented a camera in 1888 that was able to record rapid motion and, in theory, shot 12 times per second. So perhaps some of the pictures that appear in the link I shared in my first post were just one of several to capture the movement of people jumping.

According to a second book, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture by Terry Ramsaye, Levison "contrived an apparatus which might roughly be described as a photographing Zoetrope in that it moved photographic plates on a wheel in sequence behind a lens and shutter, instead of using a sequence of cameras which could not, obviously occupy the same position" (page 47).

GRHazelton · Oct 23, 2017

Colonel Blimp said:
I did a bit of "research" (thanks to Google) and I found something interesting in the book The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson by Paul Spehr, page 297. Levison presented a camera in 1888 that was able to record rapid motion and, in theory, shot 12 times per second. So perhaps some of the pictures that appear in the link I shared in my first post were just one of several to capture the movement of people jumping.

According to a second book, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture by Terry Ramsaye, Levison "contrived an apparatus which might roughly be described as a photographing Zoetrope in that it moved photographic plates on a wheel in sequence behind a lens and shutter, instead of using a sequence of cameras which could not, obviously occupy the same position" (page 47).

Many thanks for the info! I was of course familiar with Muybridge and his work for Leland Sanford to settle a bet. I had assumed that Muybridge had used a studio setup, perhaps not! It would have been a BIG studio to accommodate the horse and all those cameras, and imagine the cleanup! Whatever, its remarkable that these pioneers accomplished what they did without some sort of "flexible" base for an emulsion. The thought of using glass plates for these efforts is astounding. Were there no equivalents to celluloid substrates which might have preceded Edison?

gr82bart · Nov 18, 2017

Fantastic images. Thanks so much for sharing your find and research.

Regards, Art

New York in motion c. 1884-1904 by Wallace G. Levison

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