MAREY, Étienne-Jules.“Des mouvements que certains animaux exécutent pour retomber sur leurs pieds, lorsqu'ils sont précipités d'un lieu élevé” by Étienne-Jules Marey (Comptes rendus 119, pp. 714–718, 1894). A big volume bound in contemporary leather and boards. Some wear to spine leather; otherwise fine inside and out. 1250.00
“Étienne-Jules Marey was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer, best known for the invention and use of a chronophotographic gun, an instrument capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, with all the frames recorded on the same picture. Using these pictures he studied the motion of a wide range of animals called Marey's 'animated zoo'”.--Wenner, History of Physics
This paper contains the famous falling/dropped/thrown cat experiment in which Marey shows that when dropped with its back towards the ground a cat will respond and right itself via muscular reaction to land on its feet, all of the time. It was not a trick of “air pressure” or other such thing which Marey dismissed, as once the action of the fall is slowed so that the whole of the activity can be intelligently observed, and it was by the animal's movement alone that brings it to land on its feet. It is Marey's instrumentation that takes the day, using a camera capable of making 60 images per second, which was a huge advance over his chronophotographic gun of 1882 which made 12 images/second. Marey remarks that this animal action is true in other animals, giving the examples of rabbit and dog.
Marey is a rather stiff writer and takes his time to explain himself in extended detail—this isn't an entertaining story though the results are of course fantastic.
That piece of needling aside, Marey is one of my favorite 19th century science figures. He worked across numerous fields, though I think his great importance is in the invisible-to-visible part--that he was able to make was were essentially moving pictures of complex and/or fast action, displaying motion in shockingly easy manner. His work opened as much of a new and surprising world as that of Lippershey/Galileo and Co. with the telescope and Janssen/Leeuwenhoek/ and the others with the microscope.
“In Marey’s view, physiology “is itself but the study of organic movements,” and the graph best represents all the variations that such phenomena undergo. Marey believed, however, that these motions ultimately were to be explained by laws of physics and chemistry. Furthermore, while he accepted the application of physiological research to medical problems, he subordinated this utilitarian purpose to a more abstract goal: “analyzing the conditions which modify the functions of life and … better determining the laws which regulate these functions.” Toward this end medicine served only as one further means of analysis.”--Complete DSB. “Marey constructs, according to the reversible principle of the chronophotograph, an apparatus for the projection on a screen of series of pictures taken by the aforementioned apparatus and thus realizes the photographic synthesis of motion."--Eder, History of Photography. See: Tosi, Virgilio, Cinema before cinema : the origins of scientific cinematography. London : British Universities Film & Video Council, 2005. Also: ARTE France. Roll on, Cinema. NY, Infobase, 2014. [Video]. Also: Alder Anderson, Analysing motion. Marlborough, England: Adam Matthew Digital, [2012]. Laurent Mannoni, Marie-Sophie Corcy, Thierry Pozzo ... [et al.]. Images, science, mouvement : Autour de Marey. Paris : Harmattan, 2003.
For further reading see G. Gbur's Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics, Yale, 2009.
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