Ottomar Anschütz is an interesting and largely forgotten figure in the history of chronophotography and the invention of movies. Unlike the better-known chronophotographers Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, whose concerns were artistic and scientific, respectively, Anschütz mainly photographed serial images with the intent to reproduce their motion for public entertainment and to do so on an industrial scale, which today's authority on Anschütz, Deac Rossell, has made clear in various writings. In this regard, Anschütz's career shared more with those of Thomas Edison and the Lumiére brothers. As Friedrich Tietjen has pointed out, however, the loop mode for the synthesis of Anschütz's images, as well as Muybridge's, demanded and created different experiences than celluloid films.
Anschütz was a professional photographer and a leader in the development of instantaneous photography before he took up chronophotography. His 1884 photographs of storks in flight inspired aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, whose gliding flights were also photographed by Anschütz (and others). For his earliest sequential photography, Anschütz copied Muybridge's system from Palo Alto, where a battery of cameras in a shed recorded horses in motion. He improved upon Muybridge's system, however, by inventing a focal-plane shutter. In 1886, he and an organ-builder named Schneider invented an apparatus of multiple small cameras for his work at Hanover, which was commissioned by the Prussian government for improving cavalry riding techniques and other military investigations.
Anschütz and Schneider also made their first version of a viewing device for reproducing motion in 1886. Anschütz built various machines for synthesis during his career and called them the "Schnellseher" ("quick viewer")—also known as the "Tachyscope" or "Electrical Wonder". All models featured the images on either a disc or a strip, in the tradition of the optical toys the Phenakistiscope and the Zoetrope. The most commonly reproduced picture of a Schnellseher, a Scientific America illustration, is of an early version where a large Phenakitiscope wheel was turned on one side of a wall while several people viewed the continuous motion of up to 24 images per scene on the other end. The first public demonstration of it was given on 19 March 1887 for his patrons at the Prussian Culture Ministry in Berlin and other guests. Other versions of the Schnellseher were for home use, including Zoetrope improvements and "Sprechende Porträts" ("Speaking Portraits"), the latter of which likely inspired Georges Demeny's Phonoscope (see "Je vous aime" (1891)).
Likewise, the coin-operated peephole automated Schnellsehers were a precursor to the Kinetoscope. (According to Gordon Hendricks in his book "The Edison Motion Picture Myth", Edison's team, at one point in their invention trials, likely built their own Schnellseher.) The company Siemens and Halske manufactured these devices, and they were exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. They premiered 16 May 1891 in Frankfurt. At the 1893 World's Columbian Fair in Chicago, they competed with Muybridge's Zoöpraxiscope. Unlike the Zoöpraxiscope, the Schnellsehers incorporated intermittent movement from a flashing Geissler tube, which allowed for the use of photographs instead of the drawn animation used by Muybridge. Most impressively, Anschütz demonstrated a Projecting Electrotachyscope on 25 November 1894 in Berlin and began exhibitions for a paying public on 22 February 1895. This system included an intermittent Maltese-cross movement and projected images on a large screen measuring about 6 by 8 meters (19 ½ by 26 ¼ feet). Predating this, Henry Heyl had projected photographic images of a waltzing couple and other scenes in 1870 with his Phasmatrope, but those were of individually posed pictures rather than subjects captured instantaneously in real motion.
Horses, as with Muybridge and Marey, were a popular subject for Anschütz. All three men's enthusiasm for horses was also borne of scientific inquiry: training for sport in the case of Muybridge, physiological analysis for Marey, and military training for Anschütz. Two of his surviving series are from his Hanover work of military riders on horses jumping over obstacles. Three other remaining series available on the web and elsewhere are of athletic feats. Contemporaries remarked on the superior quality of his dry-plate images compared to the work of Muybirdge and Marey. It's somewhat odd, then, that historians have written much about the influence Muybridge and Marey had on art and have found no such connection with Anschütz. (See "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" (1880) and "Falling Cat" (1894).) Lost scenes made by Anschütz, however, suggest a more direct influence on subsequent entertainment filmmaking. A scene of card players may have been the basis for remakes by the Lumière brothers ("Partie d'écarté") and Georges Méliès ("Une partie de cartes") (both 1896). His barbershop scene perhaps inspired the Kinetoscope film "The Barbershop" (1894) or been a remake of it. Others seem to have been similar to comic expression films that were a popular subject in early cinema.
Yet, unlike the celluloid films, the movies of Anschütz's spinning discs and drums, as Tietjen has written, were circular—rather than the linear nature of film that allowed, eventually, for narratives. They lasted only a second or two, but would repeat on a loop so long as the disc or drum were turned and unchanged. Naturally repetitive motions such as galloping horses fit this loop mode well, whereas these lost scenes may have appeared unrealistic. Tietjen, however, mentions how a film such as the Lumières' "La sortie des usines Lumière" (1895), with its opening and closing of the gates, could also conform to a loop.
Anschütz's attempts to industrially commercialize his motion photographs as entertainment represent the pinnacle of the loop mode of movies—ending just as celluloid films were taking off. Despite the differences of these formats, the work of Anschütz was of significant influence on early filmmaking.
(Main Sources: "Ottomar Anschütz and his Electrical Wonder", "Living Pictures: The Origins of the Movies", "Breaking the Black Box: A Reassessment of Chronophotography as a Medium for Moving Pictures" by Deac Rossell. "Loop and Life: A False Start into Protocinematic Photographic Representations of Movement" by Friedrich Tietjen.)
Anschütz was a professional photographer and a leader in the development of instantaneous photography before he took up chronophotography. His 1884 photographs of storks in flight inspired aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, whose gliding flights were also photographed by Anschütz (and others). For his earliest sequential photography, Anschütz copied Muybridge's system from Palo Alto, where a battery of cameras in a shed recorded horses in motion. He improved upon Muybridge's system, however, by inventing a focal-plane shutter. In 1886, he and an organ-builder named Schneider invented an apparatus of multiple small cameras for his work at Hanover, which was commissioned by the Prussian government for improving cavalry riding techniques and other military investigations.
Anschütz and Schneider also made their first version of a viewing device for reproducing motion in 1886. Anschütz built various machines for synthesis during his career and called them the "Schnellseher" ("quick viewer")—also known as the "Tachyscope" or "Electrical Wonder". All models featured the images on either a disc or a strip, in the tradition of the optical toys the Phenakistiscope and the Zoetrope. The most commonly reproduced picture of a Schnellseher, a Scientific America illustration, is of an early version where a large Phenakitiscope wheel was turned on one side of a wall while several people viewed the continuous motion of up to 24 images per scene on the other end. The first public demonstration of it was given on 19 March 1887 for his patrons at the Prussian Culture Ministry in Berlin and other guests. Other versions of the Schnellseher were for home use, including Zoetrope improvements and "Sprechende Porträts" ("Speaking Portraits"), the latter of which likely inspired Georges Demeny's Phonoscope (see "Je vous aime" (1891)).
Likewise, the coin-operated peephole automated Schnellsehers were a precursor to the Kinetoscope. (According to Gordon Hendricks in his book "The Edison Motion Picture Myth", Edison's team, at one point in their invention trials, likely built their own Schnellseher.) The company Siemens and Halske manufactured these devices, and they were exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. They premiered 16 May 1891 in Frankfurt. At the 1893 World's Columbian Fair in Chicago, they competed with Muybridge's Zoöpraxiscope. Unlike the Zoöpraxiscope, the Schnellsehers incorporated intermittent movement from a flashing Geissler tube, which allowed for the use of photographs instead of the drawn animation used by Muybridge. Most impressively, Anschütz demonstrated a Projecting Electrotachyscope on 25 November 1894 in Berlin and began exhibitions for a paying public on 22 February 1895. This system included an intermittent Maltese-cross movement and projected images on a large screen measuring about 6 by 8 meters (19 ½ by 26 ¼ feet). Predating this, Henry Heyl had projected photographic images of a waltzing couple and other scenes in 1870 with his Phasmatrope, but those were of individually posed pictures rather than subjects captured instantaneously in real motion.
Horses, as with Muybridge and Marey, were a popular subject for Anschütz. All three men's enthusiasm for horses was also borne of scientific inquiry: training for sport in the case of Muybridge, physiological analysis for Marey, and military training for Anschütz. Two of his surviving series are from his Hanover work of military riders on horses jumping over obstacles. Three other remaining series available on the web and elsewhere are of athletic feats. Contemporaries remarked on the superior quality of his dry-plate images compared to the work of Muybirdge and Marey. It's somewhat odd, then, that historians have written much about the influence Muybridge and Marey had on art and have found no such connection with Anschütz. (See "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" (1880) and "Falling Cat" (1894).) Lost scenes made by Anschütz, however, suggest a more direct influence on subsequent entertainment filmmaking. A scene of card players may have been the basis for remakes by the Lumière brothers ("Partie d'écarté") and Georges Méliès ("Une partie de cartes") (both 1896). His barbershop scene perhaps inspired the Kinetoscope film "The Barbershop" (1894) or been a remake of it. Others seem to have been similar to comic expression films that were a popular subject in early cinema.
Yet, unlike the celluloid films, the movies of Anschütz's spinning discs and drums, as Tietjen has written, were circular—rather than the linear nature of film that allowed, eventually, for narratives. They lasted only a second or two, but would repeat on a loop so long as the disc or drum were turned and unchanged. Naturally repetitive motions such as galloping horses fit this loop mode well, whereas these lost scenes may have appeared unrealistic. Tietjen, however, mentions how a film such as the Lumières' "La sortie des usines Lumière" (1895), with its opening and closing of the gates, could also conform to a loop.
Anschütz's attempts to industrially commercialize his motion photographs as entertainment represent the pinnacle of the loop mode of movies—ending just as celluloid films were taking off. Despite the differences of these formats, the work of Anschütz was of significant influence on early filmmaking.
(Main Sources: "Ottomar Anschütz and his Electrical Wonder", "Living Pictures: The Origins of the Movies", "Breaking the Black Box: A Reassessment of Chronophotography as a Medium for Moving Pictures" by Deac Rossell. "Loop and Life: A False Start into Protocinematic Photographic Representations of Movement" by Friedrich Tietjen.)
