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The inventor and the tycoon a gilded age murder and the birth of moving pictures

From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, a riveting true life/true crime narrative of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads. One hundred and thirty years ago Eadweard Muybridge invented stop-motion photography, anticipating and making possible motion pictures. He was the first to capture time and play it back for an audience, giving birth to visual media and screen entertainments of all kinds. Yet the artist and inventor Muybridge was also a murderer who killed coolly and meticulously, and his trial is one of the early instances of a media sensation. His patron was railroad tycoon (and former California governor) Leland Stanford, whose particular obsession was whether four hooves of a running horse ever left the ground at once. Stanford hired Muybridge and his camera to answer that question. And between them, the murderer and the railroad mogul launched the age of visual media. Set in California during its frontier decades, The Tycoon and the Inventor interweaves Muybridge's quest to unlock the secrets of motion through photography, an obsessive murder plot, and the peculiar partnership of an eccentric inventor and a driven entrepreneur. A tale from the great American West, this popular history unspools a story of passion, wealth, and sinister ingenuity.

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  • "From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, a riveting true life/true crime narrative of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads. One hundred and thirty years ago Eadweard Muybridge invented stop-motion photography, anticipating and making possible motion pictures. He was the first to capture time and play it back for an audience, giving birth to visual media and screen entertainments of all kinds. Yet the artist and inventor Muybridge was also a murderer who killed coolly and meticulously, and his trial is one of the early instances of a media sensation. His patron was railroad tycoon (and former California governor) Leland Stanford, whose particular obsession was whether four hooves of a running horse ever left the ground at once. Stanford hired Muybridge and his camera to answer that question. And between them, the murderer and the railroad mogul launched the age of visual media. Set in California during its frontier decades, The Tycoon and the Inventor interweaves Muybridge's quest to unlock the secrets of motion through photography, an obsessive murder plot, and the peculiar partnership of an eccentric inventor and a driven entrepreneur. A tale from the great American West, this popular history unspools a story of passion, wealth, and sinister ingenuity."@en
  • "From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, this book is the riveting true story of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads. Edward Ball's ability to mine history and draw out its secrets has earned him a significant critical reputation as a best-selling nonfiction writer. In The Inventor and the Tycoon, he enthralls us again with the compelling saga of an artistic genius, a ruthless railroad tycoon, and a sordid crime of passion. In frontier California 130 years ago, English immigrant Eadweard Muybridge managed to capture time and play it back on the screen, inventing stop-motion photography and moving pictures, breakthrough technologies that ushered in our age of visual media. Bankrolling his endeavor was tycoon (and former California governor) Leland Stanford, who built the western half of the transcontinental railroad and personally drove in the last golden spike. Stanford's particular obsession was whether the four hooves of a running horse ever left the ground all at once, and with Muybridge he finally found an answer. But personal disaster overshadowed Muybridge's remarkable achievement. A visionary artist, and technically brilliant, he was also a murderer, and his search for the secrets of motion through photography is inseparable from his gripping true-crime story. Muybridge produced a stunning body of work that celebrated the Savage beauty of the American West. Yet when he discovered that the child recently borne by his young wife was not, in fact, his, he turned into a remorseless killer. The dark from a of one night changed the course of his life, and his trial -- which turned on questions of justifiable homicide, sexual rivalry, and the artist's insanity -- became a media sensation. He killed a man, and then invented the movies. Unfolding on the stage of the Old West, The Inventor and the Tycoon tells the story of an unlikely patron-artist collaboration that launched the age of images, changing the world. With style and scholarship, Edward Ball explores the collaboration between and eccentric, wondering visionary and an industrial magnate. He gives us a troubled hero with a conflicted legacy of genius and scandal and brings to life the preposterously rich pioneer Californian and founder of Stanford University. The sweeping narrative transports us from Muybridge's birthplace in England to the harsh Western frontier to the extravagant opulence of America's ruling elite. It is a story of passion, money, and sinister ingenuity that puts on display the virtues and vices of the Gilded Age. - Jacket flap."
  • "The story of Eadweard Muybridge, inventor of stop-motion photography and moving pictures--who was also a murderer--and his relationship with Leland Stanford, the wealthy railroad baron and founder of Stanford University."

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  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Electronic books"
  • "Biographies"
  • "History"
  • "Biography"
  • "Trials, litigation, etc"

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  • "The inventor and the tycoon : a Gilded Age murder and the birth of moving pictures"
  • "The inventor and the tycoon a gilded age murder and the birth of moving pictures"@en
  • "The inventor and the tycoon a Gilded Age murder and the birth of moving pictures"

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