Edward Muybridge was a photographer who worked in the late 1900's.  His work was nothing less than revolutionary.  Muybridge worked for years capturing still images of humans in motion.  His most famous work, Animal Locomotion, was created at the University of Pennsylvania between 1884 and 1885.   Muybridge took normal photography and transcended it by using multiple still frame cameras to capture a series of photos that, when viewed in sequence, suggest motion.  The successive images, create the illusion of motion and is essentially a primitive version of the motion picture.

    Muybridge was initially interested in capturing the movement of a running horse.   In 1877 he performed his first experiments utilizing a battery of precisely coordinated cameras that took a series of photos, one every 2000's of a second.  The images from this project yielded insight into the gallop that shocked the world as they clearly depicted the legs of the horse coming together under the stomach rather than outstretched in front and behind the horse as portrayed by many artists.  Muybridge was primarily interested in the artistic ramifications of this discovery, however, Scientific American realized the scientific utility of the sequences and featured his work in the October 19, 1878 issue.

    Muybridge, although considering himself an artistic photographer, embraced the scientific community that called on his expertise.  He was given the opportunity to pursue his work at the University of Pennsylvania and he did so is with a determination to make a science out of the methods he'd discovered.

    It was in the 1880's when Muybridge first began to seriously photograph the motions of humans.  He did so with several medical doctors and artistic professionals assisting and then feeding off the plethora of data collected.  Muybridge photographed men, women, and children performing everyday actions.  The results, when published, seemed to appeal to both the scientific community and also the community at large for they revealed truth about everyday motions that everyone seemed to relate to.

    After photographing for several years (and developing over 20,000 negatives), Muybridge traversed America and Europe exhibiting his work.  His lectures became famous for the still images that Muybridge projected onto a wall and made come to life as he flipped through a series.

    The scientific community used Muybridge's work to study how humans move in the 1900s, and his technique has been employed for decades.  In this project, named Muybridge3D, we advance his work by capturing humans in motion, not in two dimensions, but in three.  From the data we obtain in our experiments, we hope to make observations on how humans move with even more precision than was previously possible.