Étienne-Jules Marey (5 March 1830, Beaune, Côte-d’Or – 21 May 1904) was a French scientist and chronophotographer...His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of labor photography. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of photography and an influential pioneer of the history of cinema...
He started by studying blood circulation in the human body. Then he shifted to analyzing heart beats, respiration, muscles (myography), and movement of the body........ He adopted and further developed animated photography into a separate field of chronophotography in the 1880s. His revolutionary idea was to record several phases of movement on one photographic surface...
Marey’s chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, and the most interesting fact is that all the frames were recorded on the same picture....
Towards the end of his life he returned to studying the movement of quite abstract forms.....His last great work was the observation and photography of smoke trails... In 1901 he was able to build a smoke machine with 58 smoke trails. It became one of the first aerodynamic wind tunnels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne-Jules_Marey
