Description

HOPWOOD, Henry V.; BULL, Lucien (his copy)

Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-Production and Practical Working. With a Digest of British Patents and Annotated Bibliography

Published by The Optician & Photographic Trades Review, London, 1899

8vo; pp. i xii (ads and prelims), 275, [1, errata], xiii xxvii (ads).

A note opposite the title page signed by Stanley Bowler, dated 20 April 1967, indicates that this copy was once in the possession of Lucien Bull (1876-1972), the French-Irish inventor, ‘chronophotographer’ and assistant to Étienne-Jules Marey. Bowler was a close friend of Bull’s, and was a noted historian of photography in his own right.

Lucien Bull’s extraordinary career began in 1895 when he became assistant to Marey, at that point working on an early version of his famous “gun camera” (Chapter III deals with this invention at length). After Marey’s death in 1904 Bull succeeded him as acting head of the Marey Institute, and continued his research into a wide range of subjects, including high-speed photography, insect and bird flight, and electrocardiography. He published extensively in these and a range of other fields. The present copy bears two kinds of marginalia: notes alongisde particular references and names (these apparently earlier, and generally relating to Marey), and a series of notes laid in later indicating that some of the images are reversed.

The book’s author, Henry Hopwood, was an employee at the Patent Office on Chancery Lane, and conducted his research largely through examination of patent records, which are presented in a lengthy appendix. For this reason alone the work remains of immense value for historians of early cinema. The Encyclopaedia of Early Cinema calls it ‘the first comprehensive technical review of early cinema’, and cinema historian Stephen Herbert calls it ‘the most important Victorian book on cinematography’.

A very good copy, recased, but this is only really noticeable to the inner hinges. Internally very good throughout, noting only the minor marginal notes detailed above and Bowler’s inscription.