Dear Sophie -
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE was a photographer from England who settled in San Francisco.
There he met Leland Stanford who was the governor, a wealthy railroad tycoon and a race-horse owner. To help prove a bet that a horse's hooves did not touch the ground at one point during a gallop, Muybridge set up a series of cameras with trip wires to study the movement. He proceeded to do a range of motion studies contributing to the invention of cinema.
With love,
Mom