In 1878, a bold wager about whether a galloping horse ever has all four hooves off the ground led to a groundbreaking photographic experiment that changed visual culture forever. The Horse in Motion tells the story of that pivotal moment at Leland Stanford's Palo Alto farm and its profound ripple effects — from the invention of the Zoopraxiscope, the world's first motion picture projector, to the birth of cinema and modern motion analysis. Blending technical insight with cultural history, this book explores how one man's obsession with freezing time helped unlock the moving image and forever altered how we see the world.

In 1878, a bold wager about whether a galloping horse ever has all four hooves off the ground led to a groundbreaking photographic experiment that changed visual culture forever. The Horse in Motion tells the story of that pivotal moment at Leland Stanford's Palo Alto farm and its profound ripple effects — from the invention of the Zoopraxiscope, the world's first motion picture projector, to the birth of cinema and modern motion analysis. Blending technical insight with cultural history, this book explores how one man's obsession with freezing time helped unlock the moving image and forever altered how we see the world.