by Francis Friel

Uh oh! Curveball!

Not only do we jump back a full ten years on our trip through the History of This Stuff, the truth is this goddammer ain't even a movie!

It's a series of still photographs by famed photographer/murderer Muybridge (for real, he murdered a guy). 

The story is that the owner of this horse wanted to know if our man could use his big fancy camera to prove once and for all that a horse, while at a full gallop, would at some point have all four hooves off the ground. 

Boom. They do.

It took 24 frames to capture and repeat the cycle, which is also (possibly apocryphally) why 24fps is the standard to this day.

It's also true that 24fps is simply the smoothest photographic representation of what our eyes can process naturally in real life, but still, cool story, right?

Weird, too, that while 24 was the best then just as now, soon 16 became more of the industry standard but, again, if you can project it correctly, anything can look good (except those weird awful Hobbit frame-rate train wrecks P. Jackson was tryna shove down our throats a few years back. I've forgiven but not forgotten.)

Tomorrow the timeline gets back on track and we move Forward! through the history of Cinema.

Get your movie-watchin' caps on.