Ottomar Anschütz(1846-1907)

Ottomar Anschütz was a German inventor, photographer, and chronophotographer. Between 1864 and 1868, he studied photography under some of the well-known photographers of the time. He received recognition for his photograph of John of Saxony on horseback in 1867, and then took over his father's company in Lissa, mainly working as a portrait photographer and as a decorative painter. In 1881, he made his first instantaneous photographs. In 1882, he developed his portable camera and made a name for himself with sharp photographs of imperial military demonstrations in Breslau the same year, and gained more fame with pictures of flying white storks in 1884 - the first photographs of birds on the wild. In 1885, he made his first chronophotographs of horses. The quality of his pictures was generally regarded to be much higher than that of the chronophotography works of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey. In 1886, he developed the Electrotachyscope, an early device that displayed short motion picture loops with 24 glass plate photographs on a 1.5 meter wide rotating wheel that was hand-cranked to the speed of circa 30 frames per second. Each image was illuminated by a sparking spiral Geissler tube and displayed on a small opal glass window in a wall in a darkened room for up to seven spectators. Different versions were developed and shown at many international exhibitions, fairs, conventions and arcades from 1887 until at least 1894, and probably inspired many other pioneers in the history of film technology.