Etienne-Jules Marey: A Passion for the Trace

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Etienne-Jules Marey

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A Passion for the Trace

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Zone Books • New York • 1992

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Trens l ated by Robert Ge lete with Jeen i ne Herman

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Etienne-Jules Marey

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A Passion for the Trace

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Fran1yois Dagognet --:::-

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

oat

1K Roben G•le11 would like very much to th•nk M•nin Joughin and Raymond Rushforth and especially Anne-Marie Cervera, Jane Sh•w •nd the students of the Veterinary School of Lyon.

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Cl 1992 Un.one, Inc. 611 Broadway, Suite 608 New York,

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No pirt of this book m1iy be. reproduced, stored in a retriev.1.I system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, lnclud• ing elecnonic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording. or otherwise (except for th.J.t copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without wriucn permission from the Publisher. Originally published in Frincc u EtienM-jules .4forc:r: Lo Ponion

de la tract, 0 1987 by Editions Maun. Printed in the United States of America. Distributed by The MIT Press,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London , England Libr.uy of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dagognct, Francois. Eticnnc•Julcs Marcy : a passion for the trace / Fran~ois Oagognct.

p. cm. lndudcs bibliographical rc:fcrc ncr-s and index. ISH~' 0"'942299-""64•7 - 1S8!'1: 0 •9·2299•65•5 (pipt-r)

1. Marcy. Ed cnnc-Julcs, 18 30-1904 . 2. Chronophotography. I.

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TR84 q.MJ7DJI

1992

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- -- -- - -· ,,.q,qL :;;'s //, ??? /" ,>,. Anot her dt.•,dcc " calculated" the times, in such a way t hat the expo· sure time was known as well as the inten·als bet ween succcssi\'e images (c hronophotogra• phy). Soon, i\l m :y would again dt.•vote himse lf to capturing all angles oft he bird in flight; from below and abo,·e, mo ving away and appro.1ching. He would be able to obsen·c the indindtion of the wing planes, the cun·c of the primaries arnl th e slightest rno..emcnt s of the body. Need less to SJ )', it would take se..eral ~·cars (beginning in 1878- 1881 ) to perfec t such an assemblage . I skip ahe.1d to underline th e connect io n bet ween Jansscn's "' re,·oh-c r" andi\larcy'sgun.

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, ... ,,_,.,,.,. . -.1 ()ol••IOl v idence comes from the lett er of December 1878, in which Marcy congr.uul.ued the American photographer on his "shot s" of the galloping horse, and alread y raises the ques1ion of aerial locomoti on: "For 1he problem of 1he night of birds, I dreamed of a kind of photographic gun ...... In April 1882, this dre,1.m woul,I become realit y. l e t me recapitulate the two stages o f my ,1.ccount: in 1878, ,1.n im.:ige sped,1.list opcnc,l the way to chemical fi xa tion, 1hc new se nsor. He suc cessful I)' resoJ..ed the question of "running quadrupet' I ll'f n· comi ruction. Jnd nmhing ".1, 1< i\ l.m·y\ w.1, 1101 .m uutright ,·il'tory. 1:irst. hi\ tl'clini,1111' w,1, lirnitl'd to certain lll0Yem1·11ts, b.1,il-,1ll y thmt· d1,11 t,H,k 111.in· on l.111P,lratus for the imitation of the wing beat of a bird. Taken from Marey,

le Vo l ocs o,scau•.

It was also significant that Marey moved from an omithopteral understanding (flgure 45) (the beating wings of his artificial bird, up and down and forward and backward) to abandoning the notion of similarity in favor of the airplane (mono- or biplane, slightly inclined, with motorized propellers), without disregarding the importance of other morphological factors. The technological realization was, in fact, entrusted to Victor Tatin who worked in Marey's laboratory. He published th ree articles in Physioloyie expirimentale: Travaux du laboratoire Morey: "Experiences sur le vol mecanique" ( 1876); "Recherches synthetiques sur le vol" (1877), and "Sur le mecanisme du vol" (1878-1879). Around 1879, he built a (smallscale) plane in which the fuselage served as a tank for compressed air, which could activate a motor connected to two tractor-propellers (positioned in front). This was a departure from Penaud, who used wound-up strips of rubber as the motor force (his light planophorc dates from 1871).

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A PASS I ON FOR T HE TRAC E

Marey's research directly inspired Tat in, as he was rond or pointing out, first because he established that it was not the bird, but its flight that was to be "copied," but particularly because he began to pose the problem in increasingly aerodynamic terms. Marey discovered and then demonstrated that flying creatures had solved the problem with great economy: the energy expended did not exceed that whi ch the simplest machine could supply; humans ought to be able to do as well. Animal Mechanism ended with this sentence: "Mechanism can always reproduce a movement, the nature or which has been clearly defined." Tatin was preceded by the Englishmen George Caylay and William Henson. They had already solved problems or construction and advocated "fixed wings" as well as a system of propulsion using propellers. Indeed, the essentials had been round berore Marey: Caylay had already made a model or a glider and Henson had obtained a patent ror his flying machine. But Tatin's aerial and Mareyan "automobile," which used compressed air, nevertheless marked a step rorward in the process, entering the whirlwind or trials and triumphs that characterized the end or the nineteenth century. This small-scale model, with its powerful motor (figure 46 ), validated hypotheses or the kind associated with Giovanni Borelli (praised by Marey, he was no doubt the first to establish a purely mechanical concept in his treatise De motu animalium [ 1680] 44 ). The model flew for several minutes inside its revol ving frame, as it was still held by a rope to a post, like a kite. Though not revolutionary, it was nevertheless a moment in, and testimony to, the evolution in progress. Marey and Tatin's aerodynamics deserves its place in the adventure or the conquest of the air (navigation). It contributed to the eclipse of the reign of"aerostats" (balloons) and began to transrorm man, not into a bird (the old dream or myth) but into a motorist of the sky. ls this to overrate or glorify Marey? Am I overestimating his achievements? Animal Mechanism con tained an avowal that revealed the motives and aims explicitly pursued by Marey: 12 2

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