Did a bet over a galloping horse give birth to the movies?

Probably not. The tale says that a horse owner bet that a galloping horse has all four hooves off the ground at once, and hired a photographer to prove it, and that this wager started the movies. The historian Phillip Prodger, who studied the evidence, believes the bet is apocryphal: he says there are no first-hand accounts of it. What is solid is the question itself, and what came after.

The man behind it was Leland Stanford, an industrialist and horseman who commissioned Muybridge's work. From watching his racehorses he was convinced that painters drew running horses wrongly: most paintings showed a gallop as a flying leap, front legs stretched forward and back legs stretched back, like a flying squirrel. The human eye could not fully break down the action at a gallop, so looking could not settle it. A camera might.

Photographer Eadweard Muybridge first thought a sharp picture of a speeding horse was impossible. In 1878 he lined up twelve cameras along a track, with wires across the ground. As a sulky wheel hit each wire, a shutter opened. The result was a strip of photographs of one stride, and it showed that all four feet really do leave the ground, but when the legs are gathered under the body, not stretched out like the paintings.

Then Muybridge turned the stills back into motion with a projector of his own, painted from his photographs. It was not quite film, but it pointed the way.