The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures
By Edward Ball
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
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.
Edward Ball
Edward Ball is the author of several nonfiction books, including The Inventor and the Tycoon, about the birth of moving pictures in California, and Slaves in the Family, an account of his family’s history as slaveholders in South Carolina, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has taught at Yale University and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. He is also the recipient of a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Read more from Edward Ball
Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeninsula of Lies: A True Story of Mysterious Birth and Taboo Love Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History Through DNA Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What I Learned In The Streets And Prison That Can Help You Win At The Game Of Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/539 Things About Life I Learned in Prison: Turn My Mistake into Your Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Inventor and the Tycoon
Related ebooks
The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unscripted: Hollywood Back-Stories Vol. 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pioneers (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLetters from Mr. J B Fact Finder: A Letter for Each Week of the Year Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCudlipp's Circus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRepublic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Show at the Alamo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLost History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Helluva Town: The Story of New York City During World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Human Figure in Motion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Written in Blood: A Cultural History of the British Vampire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Rim of the Sea: A Journey in Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSilent Cinema Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5East in Eden: William Niblo and His Pleasure Garden of Yore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chicago of Europe: And Other Tales of Foreign Travel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sweet and Savage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood on the Moon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Zero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Color of Time Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Study Guide to The Major Plays of Eugene O'Neill Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Are Not Human: How Words Kill Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNostromo A Tale Of The Seaboard(Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLivingstone's London: A Celebration of People and Places Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWelcome to New London: Journeys and encounters in the post-Olympic city Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Mob: The Fight Against Organized Crime in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Sisters in Black: The Bizarre True Case of the Bathtub Tragedy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Inventor and the Tycoon
0 ratings0 reviews