If we were to walk into a bar in 1872, chances are we would be sitting around arguing over whether or not if a horse that is galloping, would have all four hooves leave the ground at the same time?
Conventional wisdom at the time said that horses leave at least one hoof on the ground at all times.
Legend has it that Leland Stanford, the Governor of California, wanted to settle a bet so he hired a photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, to find the answer.
Over the next six years after losing negative images, a murder (yep, true story), and some experimenting; by improving the shutter speed, Muybridge was able to prove that horses do leave the ground with all four hooves when galloping. Along the way, Muybridge created the zoopraxiscope, the first early movie projector in this process.
A lot of work to solve a bet.
Fast forward to today, if you wanted to settle a bet within a few minutes someone will inevitably exclaim, “I’ll google it.” Where is the fun in that? It is the ultimate trump card. No more back and forth bickering, no more tension. Google has ended the bet.
What’s interesting about this is Muybridge did not start out by developing the first early movie projector – he started out by looking for a solution to Stanford’s problem. It was the tension that created the itch for Stanford which lead to Muybridge’s invention. The itch is still there today but we need more tension if we are going to make innovations and inventions like Muybridge. Don’t let Google release the tension. Scratch harder, dig deeper. There is a whole world of possibility out there.
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