On another message board I frequent, the topic of this photograph came up. It shows 4 people riding around in a tiny circular track, almost like a miniature velodrome.
I don’t think there is any question it’s possible to ride on such a track. The interesting question is whether film and lighting technology in 1901/1902 was good enough to capture a sharp image of people riding on it.
It seems there are 3 possibilities:
[ul]
[li]The photo was taken using a flash. Except the lighting looks a little too even and uniform to be from a single flash, and I don’t believe they had the technology to synchronize multiple flashes?[/li][li]The photo was taken using very bright lighting, but not flash. The question then becomes, was it possible to produce sufficiently bright lighting? And were camera shutters fast enough to freeze motion like this?[/li][li]The scene was staged, with wires supporting the bikes and their riders.[/li][/ul]
Further evidence for the “staged” theory are these two photos, which show the riders in almost the same positions, but taken from different angles:
The thing that stays ‘fake’ to me is how upright they’re riding. to pull of this stunt I would think they would have to be much closer to parallel with the ground. At that angle I would think they would just slide right back down to the bottom unless they weren’t attempting to stay on the sides for any length of time but rather just going up and coming right back down. Also, if it’s fake (and actually taken in the 1900’s like you said) it was probably done with wires or some sort of double exposure and the first one you linked to was cleaned up with a program like photoshop.
It looks like a modern reconstruction to me - the angles of the cycles vs the track and gravity don’t worry me - still photos of a dynamic system often look awkwardly balanced - it’s the haircuts (including lack of facial hair) and the minimally-engineered track that bristles my suspicion - and the composition and quality of the photo seems modern too.
The second two are interesting if you look at the shadows, their obviously not taken at the same time, the front rider seems to be posed with the other riders in motion, notice the guy on the right has moved.
Not to mention the clothes. They look like they’re wearing modern stretch-knits to me. Compare this picture of a cyclist from 1901 in a full suit and bowler hat. I’d expect something like that, or maybe shirt-sleeves and braces if they were really expecting to work up a sweat.
Staged, but I think wires would be visible, so some other way. I wouldn’t doubt that performers could balance well for a short time, as long as the wheels weren’t sliding.
I accept its a genuine photo from 1901, but it has to be a diorama. if they were moving there would be motion blur on the wheel spokes. I don’t believe they had any kind of high speed photography in 1901…
Well, the big difference is that the guys in this photo are performers in variety theatre act. A fairer comparison might be to circus performers.
The photos are clearly taken on a theatre stage, so I would think that the lighting would be the theatre’s stage lights, which would explain the brightness and the multiple sources.
From the title of the image, I’d imagine that this was an act at one of BF Keith’s variety theatres – probably taken as a publicity shot. It’s almost certainly a real act, though the photos themselves may have had to be staged.
even with big stage lights I don’t believe you could get get enough light to shoot with a fast enough shutter to have no noticeable motion blur whatsoever on the wheel spokes.
That would take high speed strobe photography, which according to wikipedia was developed in 1923:
I don’t think there’s any way they could balance in those positions, without some kind of support - they’re leaning over enough that their centres of gravity are beyond the line of the wheels.
This is a stage act, they aren’t on the way to church or the store. Would a trapeze artist wear a suit too? You may be too young to know, but wool was the sports fabric of the day. The canonical black cycling shorts were originally made of wool. Wool knits are very stretchy.
This may have been a staged publicity photo, but I have no doubt the act was real.
They are appropriately dressed for the era. Expecting a “full suit and bowler hat” for stunt cyclists on a track would be like me expecting to see BMX racers wearing a suit and tie because I’ve seen so many pictures of people commuting to work by bike.
The photo is genuinely from 1901-1902, you can see it at the museum in New York. The online version looks like they cropped it closer and digitally cleaned it up for improved contrast and sharpness.
I’ve seen action shots from the same era which are sharp and have no motion blur.
When you see modern motorcyclists inside a cage of relatively the same dimensions, when they are at that angle, their bodies are tilted way more toward parallel than these people’s. So even if they were a stage act that did this sort of thing, this particular photo may have been staged.
I see that the photo is from the New York Times archives. You might send an email to Errol Morris c/o the NYT and ask him about it. He’s written numerous articles in the paper where he delves into the veracity of just this kind of image.
And amazingly, subsequent posters ignore this information in their effort to show how this photo couldn’t possibly be from 1901.
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked around, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
“Your learning’s at fault this time, anyway:
Don’t waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir Critic, good day!”
No it wouldn’t. A simple flash will do the trick. Now, where flashpowder technology was at that time, and how much of it you would need for a picture like this, I have no idea. But it is possible to take a camera with a slow maximum shutter speed and freeze motion. In that case, the “shutter speed,” is equal to the flash duration. (Of course, bleed in from ambient light can cause blurring using this technique, too, so you have to make sure almost all your light on the subject is provided by the artificial light source.)
In terms of shutter speed, you would need about 1/500 second to freeze the wheels. Maybe, just maybe, you can squeeze out 1/250. However, so far as I could find specs for cameras of this day and age, I can’t find anything faster than 1/100 second.
So, if this is not set-up somehow, it would have to have been done with magnesium flashpowder. It does look like a “lit” photo to my eyes, but I have no idea what the possibilities of flashpowder techniques at the time were like.
