Last night I stayed up late reading (not yet quite finishing) a marvellous book by Rebecca Solnit, [amazon_link id=”0747568413″ target=”_blank” ]Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge[/amazon_link]. I discovered her writing last year, when I wolfed down [amazon_link id=”1841957453″ target=”_blank” ]A Field Guide To Getting Lost [/amazon_link]and [amazon_link id=”1844675580″ target=”_blank” ]Wanderlust: A History of Walking[/amazon_link].

This 2003 book is a reflection on technology, nature and society. Muybridge took the famous series of photographs revealing motion to human eyes – as Solnit puts it: “With photography, they would come to see faster what had been hidden in time, and then to reconstruct those moments in time.” All technology really is about the conquest of time in one way or another.

Muybridge was first commissioned by Leland Stanford, one of the railroad magnates. The railroads are part of the story too, “the co-ordination of systems of technology with political and economic power.” Stanford’s reach over technology continues through the university his railroad-earned money enabled him to found. All fascinating – a reflective, poetic companion to another terrific book, Tom Standage’s [amazon_link id=”0753807033″ target=”_blank” ]The Victorian Internet[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”0747568413″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge[/amazon_image]