Signed Etienne-Jules Marey Letter

Description:

Signed Etienne-Jules Marey Letter, 17 Nov. 1899, folded sheet embossed J.M. 11 Bd. Delessert, Trocadero, 7 x 9 in; and a pamphlet L'Inevntion du Cinematographe.

Text in full: "Mon Cher Gastine, M. Bertrand va sans doute vous accaparer beaucoup, aussi ai-je pense qu'il vous serait agreeable d'etre soulage de la redaction de cette notice historique. Si vous avez fait quelque chose vous pouvez me l'envoyer mais je tacherai en travaillant avec M. Vidal de faire quelche chose qui correspond au desir de l'administration. J'ai oublie de vous demander a vous en etiez pour le travail destine a M. le Dr. Tissie de Bordeaux. Cordialement a Vous. Marey".

Note: Etienne-Jules Marey, the French physiologist and chronophotographer was born in Beaune, France in 1830. He studied surgery and physiology in Paris and qualified as a doctor in 1859, setting up a laboratory in 1864 to study the circulation of blood. In 1868 he published Le Mouvement Dans les Fonctions de la Vie. Marey studied movement using recording instruments and graphs, and he succeeded in analyzing diagrammatically the walk of man and of the horse, and the flight of birds and insects. The results - published in La Machine Animale in 1873 - aroused much interest and led Eadweard Muybridge (see Lot 1656) to pursue his own photographic researches into horse movement. In 1882, Marey perfected the "photographic gun", capable of taking twelve exposures in one second, and then invented a chronophotographic fixed plate camera which was equipped with a timed shutter. Using this, he succeeded in combining, on a single plate, several successive images of a single movement. Over the next eight years, ge continued to improve his invention, replacing the disc with a strip of sensitized paper and eventually a strip of transparent celluloid film. Between 1890 and 1900, Marey made a considerable number of motion analysis filmstrips, and published another important work, Le Mouvement, describing his researches to date. He exercised a considerable influence on all the pioneering inventors of the cinema in the 1890s. His works, widely reported in the international press, were a strong inspiration for Thomas Edison and Louis Lumière, among others. Marey died in 1904.
Estimate $1,000-1,500

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