Anguish, by August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck, c. 1878. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
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In 1872, railroad magnate and racehorse owner Leland Stanford hired Eadweard Muybridge, then famous for his photographs of Yosemite Valley, to capture evidence on film that at a certain point in a horse’s trot, all four of its legs were simultaneously off the ground. Five years later, Muybridge developed a camera with a shutter speed of 2/1000 of a second, fast enough to prove Stanford correct. Muybridge went on a lecture tour with a device of his own design, the zoopraxiscope, which, through the rapid projection of photographic images, created the illusion of continuous movement.
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
—Voltaire, 1769







