The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures

by Edward Ball

From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, a riveting true life/true crime narrative of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads.
 
One hundred and thirty years ago Eadweard Muybridge invented stop-motion photography, anticipating and making possible motion pictures. He was the first to capture time and play it back for an audience, giving birth to visual media and screen entertainments of all kinds. Yet the artist and inventor Muybridge was also a murderer who killed coolly and meticulously, and his trial is one of the early instances of a media sensation. His patron was railroad tycoon (and former California governor) Leland Stanford, whose particular obsession was whether four hooves of a running horse ever left the ground at once. Stanford hired Muybridge and his camera to answer that question. And between them, the murderer and the railroad mogul launched the age of visual media.
   
Set in California during its frontier decades, The Tycoon and the Inventor interweaves Muybridge's quest to unlock the secrets of motion through photography, an obsessive murder plot, and the peculiar partnership of an eccentric inventor and a driven entrepreneur. A tale from the great American West, this popular history unspools a story of passion, wealth, and sinister ingenuity.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, True Crime, Biography, Crime, American History, Audiobook

447 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2012

About the author

Edward Ball was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1958, grew up in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. He finished high school in New Orleans and attended Brown University, graduating in 1982 with a B.A. in Semiotics.

He received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1984, and afterwards moved to New York City, where he worked as a freelance art critic, writing about film, art, architecture, and books for several magazines. For several years, he wrote for The Village Voice, a weekly with a circulation of 450,000.

In 1993, he began to research his family legacy as slave owners in South Carolina, an investigation that resulted in a half-hour National Public Radio documentary, "The Other History," which was awarded, in 1994, Best Radio Feature by the Society of Professional Journalists. He looked deeper into his family's story, documented in several archives, and, after three years, published his first book, Slaves in the Family, about his family's plantations and his search for black Americans whose ancestors the writer's family had once enslaved. Slaves in the Family was a New York Times bestseller and won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

Edward Ball's other books comprise biography, history, and memoir. He has taught at Yale University, and he lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is filled with fascinating details, but is so poorly organized that following the story becomes a chore.. It is a dual biography of Edward Muybridge (the inventor) and Leland Stanford (the tycoon.) Ball would have been far better off to have made this a book about Muybridge, a pioneering photographer whose inventions paved the way for cinematography, with the parts about Stanford included only to the extent that they relate to Muybridge. Of course others have successfully managed the format of two stories in one (Think "Devil in the White City.") What really dooms this attempt is the constant switching back and forth in time. Not only does Ball interrupt the Muybridge story to go on about Stanford, but he interrupts it to go to a different period in Muybridge's life. I actually went to Wikipedia to find a coherent account of his life. The parts about photography are very interesting. I really enjoyed learning about how Muybridge captured the images of race horses at a time when there were no shutters, and about how he put clouds into pictures. He was obviously brilliant at his craft, although quite a flawed human being. Ball squeezes everything he can out of Muybridge's murder of his wife's lover, which is mentioned throughout the book. When we finally get to his 1875 trial and the jury begins deliberating, Ball abruptly takes us back to 1861 and Muybridge's earlier years in London, including a story about a political figure who "seems" to have been Muybridge's cousin, explanations about British corporate law, etc., etc. It really makes no sense. I recommend this book only to people who are interested in photography. Those parts of the book are well worth reading.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I'm being 100% honest, The Inventor and the Tycoon is more of a 2 star read....But I found the subject matter so interesting that I'm giving it 3 Stars.

This book was a difficult read. For some reason the author decided to tell this story non linear. Which is fine if the subject is contemporary but this book is talking about events that took place 150 years ago. So I lost the thread multiple times while reading it.

The Inventor and the Tycoon is about Eadweard Muybridge(the inventor) and Leland Stanford ( the tycoon) and how their "friendship" lead to the invention of motion pictures.

Leland Stanford who also founded Stanford University, was obsessed with horse racing and wanted to know if all 4 hooves left the ground when horses ran.

Enter Eadweard Muybridge(side note: this guy spells his name like 6 different ways and the author tries to not confuse you but it was super confusing) who had invented a way to photograph moving objects. Muybridge was an interesting guy...

No No Imma be honest Muybridge was an awful human being.

He murdered a man and got away with it, he abandoned his only child a son who he sent to an orphanage and he was just genuinely a huge Asshole to everyone he met.

Had the story not jumped around so much I would have loved this book because the subject is one I find intensely fascinating but I was just too confused at times. I'll probably reread one day since I know how the writing is structured now and maybe I'll up my rating.

No rec.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Thank you Goodreads Giveaways! )

There are great stories here. The first is the story of Eadweard Muybridge, a cutting-edge and very eccentric 19th Century photographer. But Muybridge was also a murderer, tracking down and shooting his wife’s lover, before plenty of witnesses, after specifically stating his intentions and thereafter roundly bragging about it. He was put on trial in Napa, California where his attorneys argued for acquittal on the basis of shifting defenses of justification and mental impairment. This thread is the best part of the book, compelling and page-turning. One criticism, and it isn’t small, is that the author liked to leave the reader hanging during an exciting turn of events, ending a chapter where something was just about to happen and then moving on to a few unrelated (and less exciting) storylines. This is made for TV stuff and I don’t care for it. This writing gimmick was never more apparent than when the jury was just about to return with its verdict. And then we are made to wait through a few chapters about the history of railroads or Muybridge’s English roots before finding out the result. That’s just childish in my view. Gimmicky.

The second storyline is about Leland Stanford and the building of the transcontinental railroad. This is told here in ample detail. You may ask Why? Well, there is a connection between Stanford (and to a much lesser extent his railroad) and Muybridge. Stanford, made filthy rich by his railroad, needed some hobbies. One was horses, which he raised and raced but did not gamble on. Like many others, Stanford wondered if horses, at full trot or gallop, ever had all four hooves off the ground at the same time. Maybe they did, but the human eye was not able to verify. Stanford engaged Muybridge who photographed Stanford’s buildings, his railroads and, in particular, his horses. And, an inventor, he developed a way to take pictures quickly in sequence to prove that horses indeed leave the solid earth. Which leads us to the third story line…...

Which, is how Muybridge attempted to make ‘moving pictures’, a natural extension of his work with Stanford's horses. This, one might think, would be the least interesting part of the book; but that’s far from the case. Muybridge was a very good photographer. There are many pictures in this book and they are exceptional. He was also, as I mentioned before, very eccentric. So, when he started making his ‘motion pictures’, his preferred subjects were nude men and women: two naked guys wrestling; a naked woman smoking a cigarette; and often his own naked self, shoveling, ascending a staircase, throwing a pickaxe. Only a little creepy. These naked modeling sessions caused quite a stir at the University of Pennsylvania (Are you listening, Kris???) where Muybridge was employed briefly and which managed to get the painter Thomas Eakins fired. What a sordid den!!

There is much that is informative and entertaining in this book. I do recommend it. However, the intersecting storylines of Stanford and Muybridge and the need to connect the two, while certainly not contrived, is perhaps overdone, at least as to the Stanford particulars. And then there is the matter of the writing gimmicks. Like, in a very brief ‘Forward’, a very brief ‘Preface’, and again in the very first pages of the story itself, the author connects these two men, each time assuring us that one of them “was a murderer”. He also tells us that ‘Eadweard Muybridge’ is an unpronounceable name (“my subject’s name cannot be pronounced”)…and then he immediately pronounces it for us: “aid-weird my-bridge”. Not to be critical.

This was good; it could have been really, really good.

I wonder how Rebecca Solnit’s book about Muybridge compares.

[Jill Hutchinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know I am in the minority regarding this book but I just could not get into it.......and it should have been fascinating. The author combines the lives of Leland Stanford, railroad tycoon and robber baron of the late 1800s and Edward Muybridge who basically invented moving pictures and worked with Stanford filming the horses in his racing stable. Incidentally, Muybridge murdered a man for cuckolding him with his wife but was not charged with it.

Now, doesn't that sound interesting?......should have been, could have been, but not for me. First, Leland Stanford was probably the most boring millionaire in the country, so there wasn't much to write about him. Second,the author concentrates on Muybridge and gets into such minutia about his early life that the narrative crawls along looking for something to excite the imagination. He was a famous photographer but I saw nothing special about his photos at all....and the book is full of them. The author does not write the story in strict chronological order which usually doesn't bother me but it did here. I know this book was popular and I am still trying to figure out why.

[John Frazier · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this book so much more than I did. The whole idea that the completely dissimilar lives of one of America's richest tycoons and a largely uneducated peripatetic (who would get away with murder) could intersect long enough to create the genesis of what we now know as movies was (and is) a fascinating premise, one that wouldn't be believed if it weren't true and chronicled to the extent that it was. That said, author Edward Ball's chronology of events features so many flashbacks and flash-forwards that "The Inventor and the Tycoon" becomes an unnecessarily complex and laborious read, one that would've been so much smoother (and arguably dramatic) had he simply started at the beginning of each story and concluded at the end. What's more, there's just too much anecdotal history here--especially regarding Edward Muybridge's youth and extended family in England--that doesn't advance the story, which could've been told in 100 fewer pages.

Ball's style is fluid and easy to read; I'll grant him that. There's little trouble turning pages, irrelevant or not. But not only is this book filled with a number of inaccuracies that are easily noticed (for example, the Golden Spike was pounded on May 10, 1869, not 1868, and Napa is nowhere near 100 miles from San Francisco), it's filled with conclusions based on assumption and inference, neither of which carries much weight in a historical biography, especially one that centers on a period as recent as the late-19th century. (In one instance Ball himself refers to evidence as "circumstantial yet persuasive.") Too may times I read the phrase "it seems" as though that were an acceptable substitute for "it was." It's not.

As long a tome as this was, I actually did want to know more about how Leland Stanford--the "tycoon"--turned the railroad into a huge fortune. The mechanics of the Railroad Act of 1864 aren't adequately explained such that I could understand how the government's loan to Stanford and his cronies actually translated into the fortunes which would eventually mark all of them as some of the wealthiest men in American history. Although there's some reference to them having to repay the loan some 30 years later, we're not told if they did or to what extent or under what circumstances.

If this is the story of how moving pictures came to be, I can only hope they don't make a movie of it. Disappointing.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Disclaimer: my review is based on the unpublished bound galley print Doubleday sent me through the Goodreads First Reads giveaways*

First some general thoughts:

1. "Mormon politicians" You wouldn't write Protestant politicians if Standford went to Washington so why call Utah politicians Mormon politicians? (pg 71)

2. Please,please, please tell me the author did NOT just refer to an Native American woman as a "squaw" (pg 90)

3. "dry flat non-place in Utah" Really? Did Utah once bark at you and frighten you as a child Mr. Ball? (pg 98)


The book is a pleasant read, easy toned and not full of fancy words or jargon.The style is chatty and casual so should appeal to the layperson as it never really bogs down. However, for me, it is annoying to be jumping backwards and forwards in time as Ball writes the biographies of Muybridge and Standford. It's like a non-fiction version of "The Time Traveler's Wife".

I am annoyed at the chronological construction of the book. I understand the need for a hook, but since not ONE paragraph goes by in the first 6 pages that the author fails to call Muybridge a murderer, I think he has his hook without jumping away from the murder in the middle to recite the history of the Central Pacific Railroad. I think for people who have trouble remembering characters and events will have difficulty with the non-linear writing.


The title is a bit misleading as well, the book is not so much about the rise of the movie industry as it is a biography of Edward Muybridge and Leland Standford. Which while interesting wasn't what I expected based on the title. However, I did enjoy the destruction of the Edison Mythos in the last few chapters.

[Bronwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book about the beginnings of capturing movement on film. The set up of the book, though, was distracting, jumping from person to person and back and forth in time.

[George Ilsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This dual biography of the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the railroad tycoon Leland Stanford covers a much territory in a messy, disjointed and occasionally incoherent fashion.

It jumps back and forth in time, but when following different characters, an abrupt transition to another time, partly covering material already described but repeated, is another to leave this reader's head spinning. Enough of that and my poor neck became very sore!

The ending in particular is incoherent. I just re-read it to see if I missed the message the first time; perhaps I'm still missing it, but I just don't get it. Ball makes a big deal throughout about "time", how the railroads and telegraphs altered our relationships with time, and how Muybridge's stop motion photography and the invention of "moving pictures" also has captured time, or repurposed time. Some of Ball's assertions and analogies felt forced. Throughout the book, it seemed the author was trying too hard to make sweeping insightful statements and many of these fell short of the mark.

For example, Ball mentions Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which he claims describes Whitman's lovers ("when and how he had sex") and that Whitman found himself ostracized. This assertion would have startled Whitman, who had a lengthy career as a man of letters and his writings featured highly coded language.

For those interested in the story of "moving pictures" or California politics, this biography may be of great interest. I found the reading experience to be largely tedious, and I did not trust the authorial statements.

[Kathy Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not a well-written biography. Yes, I know it is about two vastly different people with different personalities, but the writing itself was not great. First the text is two choppy. It jumps from scene to scene with little coherence in events. Since it was about two people, maybe one person' story should have gone first and then the other person's until they met and did the project together. Then there could have been the separation once again as their lives went along different paths. Another pet peeve I had was the fact that Edward Ball kept talking about building size as if it had a footprint. Buildings are on measured lots and then are measured in square feet for tax purposes. I do not understand this concept of footprints except as a term used by environmentalists in regards to fuel usage. Were people using that much fuel in the "Gilded Age"? A history book should give the reader the sense that he has been transported back in time. A well-written book describes the sights, sounds and smells for the reader and in this book it felt like Ball wanted to bring the past to the present.

The inventor was Eadweard Muybridge who invented moving pictures, but not a way to show them that would make a profit. The other supporting inventions would not come about until after he died. Thomas Edison, who is not well-liked by Ball did find a way to show them but not with sound. The tycoon is Leland Stanford,he who built a railroad and gave his fortune to the school named for his son. These men came together over horses. The movement of horses to be exact. Stanford was curious to know if the feet of horses left the ground during a gallop. The only man who had any experience with this kind of photography was Muybridge. He invented things for the camera that allowed for multiple shots, but not how to sell them that way. Book of still photographs were expensive and apparently boring to consumers. Cinemas did not yet exist and the first one would not come about until a year after Muybridge died.

This is not to say the book has no merits. I learned about California and of course the economic stranglehold that the railroad had California under. I just did not like all the jumping back and forth over decades in events while I was reading. There needs to be a natural progression when reading history and this book did not have it.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where do I begin telling about this fascinating book. I was drawn to it for several reasons: I lived in the Bay Area for twelve years and made numerous trips to San Francisco. When you live near San Francisco, everyone you know (and some who are friends of friends) come to visit! We actually lived in Fremont, in the East Bay where I learned that Leland Stanford had owned over 100 acres and had a winery, which is still in operation. When I toured the Weibel winery, it was posited that Stanford could have built his university there instead of on the peninsula south of San Francisco. By reading the book, I realize that wasn't very likely due to the fact that he established his horse farm in what is known now as Palo Alto. I knew that Stanford was a "wheeler-dealer," but didn't realize how big a scoundrel he was. He would do anything to make more money regardless of how it was obtained or who it hurt.

What I had never heard of was Stanford's involvement with the very beginnings of motion pictures. Eadweard Muybridge, photographer/inventor, becomes connected with Stanford because of the latter's desire to know if all four of a trotter's hooves leave the ground in a trot. Muybridge's colorful life story would be an interesting bio in itself because of his many iterations of his livelihood (and his name), but what made him an international success and name would never have happened if it wasn't for Stanford's bankrolling the photographic experiments of Muybridge. This collaboration is what lead to Muybridge's being the first to create motion pictures. But Muybridge's life had many metamorphoses. He changed his name about as often as he changed his profession. He must have been quite brilliant and was tireless in pursuit of whatever endeavor he embarked. But he is not really a man to be admired. The entire episode concerning his marriage and subsequent murder of his wife's lover is very bizarre.

Edward Ball does research in depth and makes the story interesting. His writing is very readable--even the parts about Muybridge's experiments with capturing movement. The recognized inventor of motion pictures is Thomas Edison, but Ball shows that Edison actually stole the idea from Muybridge. This is a lengthy tome, but so interesting and liberal use of photographs (many those of Muybridge) add to the enjoyment of the book.

[CD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edward Ball's book covers a wide scope of the 19th Century American West. Ranging from England to New York to South America and even Alaska/Canada, the terrain of this story is only partially important.

This is a paired or 'dual' biography wrapped around a series of historical events similar to the works of Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America etc.) The well known Leland Stanford of railroad infamy and the founder and funder of Standford University crossed paths with an Englishman by the name of Edward Muggeridge. They were great friends and between them invented and laid much of the technical groundwork for moving pictures. Close to thirty years before films became wide spread.

Edward Muggeridge by his original or later assumed names is the primary focus of the story. A groundbreaking photographer who brought back the first really great pictures of the Yosemite Valley before even Carleton Watkins and certainly long before Ansel Adams saw his fame dissipate in his own lifetime. Partially due to his very peculiar personality and behavior, and partially from the actions of others, Muggeridge would return to his home country after having been gone for decades to die almost unknown.

The story of how infidelity of both the marital and the personal via betrayal of friendship includes side notes from the driving of the Golden Spike to the Chicago World's fair. There is murder, mayhem, riots, and all sorts of mayhem. This laid over intrigue and history produces a very readable and captivating story.

Similar to Larson in the tangents and great detail, the book is perhaps longer in places but it does not drag and the details are important in the end.

Definitely a goodread and recommended for all biography and history readers. Photography enthusiasts of 'an era' may be amazed to see how early some of the techniques Muggeridge employed were accomplished. Photoshop had nothing on this guy who made day night, added clouds, and produced photographs of artwork of photographs that he then passed off as originals. It is all in the eye of the beholder . . .

[David Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating this book difficult as I found it alternatively interesting and annoying. On the one hand, the book provides interesting information on two people who play roles related to people I myself have written books on. Eadweard Muybridge devised a way to photograph in series, the forerunner of motion pictures that was further developed by others including most notably, Thomas Edison. Leland Stanford ran the Central Pacific railroad, the western half of the transcontinental railroad that Abraham Lincoln was key in making happen. Both are interesting characters and I found the information presented to be thoroughly researched.

On the other hand, the book presents a difficult reading experience. The author jumps around in time and space so often that it is hard to keep track of when things are happening. The dual biography has been done by others effectively, but here it is cumbersome and sometimes feels force-fit. The writing style throughout is traditional biography, but then maybe three or four times in a 400 page book there is a paragraph or two of first person present day narrative ("I visited the library that holds..."); these pieces seem horribly out of place and context, offer nothing of value, and should have been deleted.

Another irritating quirk is the presence of at least one parenthetical aside on virtually every page. These asides often seem trite and unnecessary; they certainly are distracting. The writing itself often tosses out sentences that either mean nothing, are non sequiturs, or are impossibly inaccurate. This happens throughout the book. I found myself questioning why such a premier publisher as Doubleday (once the largest publisher, now merged with Alfred A. Knopf and rolled into the Penguin Random House empire) was so lax in the editing.

So I would rate this as okay because even though I did enjoy parts of it, I also often found it irritating.

[Debra Komar · Rating 2 out of 5]

What should have been a fascinating study is destroyed by poor story structure. These are two interesting men, and while their link is tenuous, there is an argument to be made in comparing and contrasting them. Since "Devil and the White City," every historical non-fictionist seems hell-bend on finding two disparate characters and weaving their stories together. What Erik Larson did to great effect in "Devil" falls flat here.

The problem is story structure. Ball wants to write a page-turning whodunit and all the credit to him for his ambitions. He fails, however, because of two fatal flaws. The first is excessive detail. Ball has done his homework - unfortunately he makes us read every single word of it. There is a world of difference between detail that bring history alive and detail for its own sake and Ball is almost always on the wrong side. Ball wants credit for scratching out the obscure, even when it has little to do with the characters or narrative at hand. Edit!!!

The second problem is structure. There are compelling parts, such as the events surrounding the murder. Sadly, Ball consistently build the drama only to slam on the breaks, abandon the narrative and go off on a prolonged (often multi-chapter in length) tangent about some unrelated nugget of history. The result is a book that is explosive in parts but the forward momentum is repeatedly stopped for no discernibly good reason. Where was the editor??? The problem is one of cutting (yes, please God, do some cutting) and pasting. Delete the filler and this book sings.

The characters warrant a serious examination but this one falls just short. Pity.

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's been a lot of buzz about the new book, The Inventor and the Tycoon by Edward Ball. It tells the stories of Leland Standord's organizing and building of the Central Pacific Railroad. The Union Pacific was built westward from Missouri to meet the Central Pacific being built eastward over and through the Sierra Nevada from Sacramento. It also tells the story of Ted Muggeridge (who changed his name numerous times and ended up as Eadweard Muybridge), the man who figured out how to take multiple photographs of a moving animal or person and then play these back so as to produce "moving pictures." It was for Leland Standford that Muybridge first photographed a moving horse. Standford had a theory that when running a horse would at times have all four feet off the ground. Muybridge was able to prove that it is true.

To read the rest of this review go to my blog at http://maryslibrary.typepad.com/my_we...

[David Longo · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I write this review of Edward Ball's "The Inventor and the Tycoon" I can't help but notice the rest of the viewers, on average, have scored this a 3.22. I must admit, I'm rather surprised it is that low. I rate this book a solid four stars. Ball writes well, he's detailed, he's interesting and he takes a novelist's approach to the true story of a photograper caught in a love triangle who helped author in moving pictures yet also killed his wife's lover. By the same token, Ball chronicles railroad mogul Leland Stanford who employed Edweard Muybridge, said murderer, and showcases all of the tycoon's eccentricities. Moreover, there's a brief crossover into Thomas Edison late in the narrative as we are taken on a brief journey into the history of moving pictutes. It's interesting. Overall, "The Inventor and the Tycoon" is a terrific tale and I will certainly read other works from Ball should I come across them.

[Courtney Coombs · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting piece of history, but this telling of it was confusing and far too long. It's the kind of story you can tell a friend in 10 minutes, and yet this book was 400 pages long. The chronology made no sense, jumping around all over the place, dropping pieces of the story all over the place like some kind of unfortunate Hansel and Gretel, but not really resolving how those pieces connected to each other in a coherent way. Ball also told the most interesting parts of the story in the first 100 pages, ostensibly as a teaser, but in effect made everything else seem really boring and disconnected. Not to mention the random parentheticals and moments when Ball inserted himself into the story. It was difficult to understand the nature of Stanford and Muybridge's relationship, which was what the book was supposed to be about. Overall, interesting topic but not well told. Muybridge was an important and fascinating man, but I wish I had gotten to understand him more.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave it two stars because I think the story it is trying to tell is really interesting. Unfortunately the author seems to have stitched together a lot of stand alone chapters into a book. It is repetitive and surprisingly boring given how exciting the storyline should be.
I will admit, I gave up. Didn't finish the book, even with a jury's verdict hanging in the balance. It was that poorly written.
Would make a great film!

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

should have been shorter, protagonist Muybridge is simply not that interesting although he certainly found himself in interesting situations... Stanford on the other hand is shocking! a true villain in the greatest sense of the word. I am shocked and surprised that all those left coasters still revere him and his institution after the shenanigans and chicanery he is responsible for. Liberals take note - Stanford should be a your next target: racist, opportunist, thief, manipulator, "loosely associated" murderer and genocide! he has it all! go get 'em lefties!!!!

[Mollie Berglund · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 8%. The content is super interesting, but this book is just organized so poorly. I’m doing no more than echoing the other reviews, which I had hoped would be wrong. Chronological order would do wonders for this book. It would be hard to follow no matter what format it was in, but listening to it as an audiobook made it even harder. I am just going to Google this guy instead.

[Torrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting subject matter made very difficult to read through a thoroughly creative combination of non-linear story-telling and irrelevant background details. Poor Eadward Muybridge, your life story is now as confusing as the way you chose to spell your name.

[Patrizia · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Inventor and the Tycoon is a fascinating character study of two men who collaborated on a project in the late 19th century that inadvertently transformed the world, although it took 50 years or so for that ripple to build momentum across the pond. One of the men was the photographic genius Edward Muybridge; the other was the railroad magnate Leland Stanford.

The book uses speculation and conjecture to build its story almost as often as it lays a foundation in fact. Since Muybridge and Stanford lived 170 years ago, this character study automatically becomes "history" but its characters are fresh, alive; their eccentricities and obsessions jump off the page.

Now, I love history. When I was a teenager, I exasperated my pals by developing massive crushes on Lord Byron and Lawrence of Arabia instead of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney. I also have a deep affection for convoluted language that doesn't imply but rather forces the reader to infer. If I hadn't gotten that useless undergraduate degree in economics, I would have gone straight after an equally impractical major in medieval history.

I remember trying to explain my love of history to my oldest kid when he was struggling through the American Revolution in the 6th grade.

"C'mon, Mom," he said. "They're dead people. Who cares?"

"Thing you have to remember, Max," I said, "is that they were people just like us, only with different technology. They had the same emotions, the same temptations. The same loves, the same hopes, the same fears."

Or, in other words: Reading a history book should be just as engrossing as reading a New Yorker profile. Right? Right!

On this point, The Inventor and the Tycoon does not disappoint. I've seldom read a biography that grappled more successfully with that dilemma – same people, different technology.

Throughout his life, Muybridge struggled to define himself in a way that would cut loose once and for all the uncertain English boy thrown without resources into a mostly indifferent world that he'd once been. These struggles took the form of innumerable name changes. At various times he was Ted Muggeridge, Edward Muygridge, Eduardo Santiago, Helios and Eadward Muybridge. He also fled his ancestral home in Kingston on Thames for California, a form of self-reinvention that's still popular today.

Stanford is remembered today for the university he endowed. During his lifetime, he stumbled into great wealth as fabulous as as any acquired by the Internet gazillionaires whose corporations, coincidently, sit on property he once owned. His rise from only middlingly successful shopkeeper to railroad mogul was as much a matter of luck as it was of talent. Note to self for next reincarnation: If you want to get wealthy beyond your wildest dreams of avarice, control those channels of distribution!

A man of seemingly phlegmatic disposition, Stanford sat on a well of deep emotion that seeped out in odd ways. One of those ways was an obsession that developed in midlife with "unsupported transit," an age-old debate about whether at any point during a horse's gallop, all four hooves left the ground simultaneously.

To satisfy his curiosity in the matter, he hired Muybridge to use his camera to document what the human eye lacked the acumen to see. At first, Muybridge doubted that this could be done, but with Stanford's vast wealth at his disposal, he figured out a technological solution. Some years later, after Stanford had withdrawn his patronage, Muybridge got the idea to animate the horse photos he'd taken for the tycoon. And so, the art of the motion picture was born.

Muybridge's unhappy personal life also turned him into the defendant in one of early California's most infamous murder trials, several years before he began his photographic work with Stanford. Muybridge shot and killed his wife's lover, and got off through an early version of jury nullification. The Inventor and the Tycoon actually begins with a description of the murder and trial, and then jumps back and forth in time between the personas of Muybridge and Stanford – a technique that I enjoyed but that many other Goodreads reviewers seem to have found immensely annoying. Many movies, after all, rely heavily on flash forwards and flashbacks, and by conscripting this narrative device, Edward Ball seemed to be paying sly homage to the art form that Muybridge --using Stanford's money – helped to invent.

[Everyday eBook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eadweard Muybridge. To many, he's an unpronounceable name. To film students, he's a piece of trivia. But to historian Edward Ball and the fortunate readers of his enthralling The Inventor and the Tycoon, Muybridge is a man who steals the show. He's the keystone to Ball's rapturous retelling of nineteenth-century America, when railroad tracks studded the ground of a lawless frontier, and when a robber baron and an eccentric inventor became the unlikely founders of modern cinema.

Long before Rhett Butler could tell Scarlet O'Hara how little he gave a damn, Muybridge was tinkering away in a darkroom, perfecting his photography skills and eventually building an apparatus that could replay live action, something like a rudimentary projector. But rewind too far and Muybridge, the future inventor of stop-motion photography, suddenly becomes Muybridge the murderer-on-trial.

You see, October 1874 wasn't the first time Muybridge had suspected his wife, Flora, of infidelity with Harry Larkyns, but it would be his last. A picture of his baby son, Florado, sat on a sitting room table. It was odd that Muybridge hadn't seen it before, and odder still to find the words "Little Harry!" -- that is, not "Little Eadweard!" -- scrawled in his wife's handwriting. This Maury Povich-worthy reveal reduced Muybridge to rubble. To the maid present, Muybridge, all "haggard and pale," broke down with "the wildest excitement." By the time his Smith & Wesson #2 connected with the chest of Larkyns, he was sure he'd hang from the California gallows.

Only, he didn't. On trial, Muybridge's lawyer knew the all-male jury had untapped empathy, easily swayed to side with a man enraged by an unfaithful wife. This was California, after all, a place where defending one's honor was grounds for murder. This place was also new, Ball reminds us, and the unspoken law of the land was simple: When land is new, there is no law. Muybridge was spared his life, and lived to enrich everyone else's.

In The Inventor and the Tycoon, equal attention is also paid to Leland Stanford, the moneybags behind Muybridge. But it says a lot of Ball's storytelling prowess that a man of such historic importance as Stanford -- a railroad magnate who connected the West to the East, as well as the eponymous founder of Stanford College -- gets second billing to the eccentricities of Muybridge. Much the same way artists in the 1900s were commissioned to colorize the frames of black-and-white film, Ball retouches Hollywood's past with cinematic flourishes and sly narrative twists, painting his settings with an unpredictable palette of infidelity, larger-than-life characters, and murderous redemption. What Edward Ball does is nothing short of brilliant. He risks sidelining readers with an obscure subject, and instead enlightens and entertains us, sending us running to the theater to imagine the murder, money, and ingenuity behind that beaming screen.

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[Yasmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Inventor and the Tycoon was fascinating. Only problem was, and that is why I haven't given it five stars, the author's interest in Edward Muggeridge's sexuality before he married. Fortunately he wasn't interested about it during his marriage and after. Another problem was when he thought Muggeridge rhymes with bugger, when it doesn't and that he thought was the reason for the name change. If that had ever been a factor in consideration, you have to be very imaginative in the Victorian Age (and knowing about the sexuality issues of the period no one was that imaginative!) then Edward's father would have changed the name if not an earlier forebear and certainly if that was in mind Sir Henry Muddgeridge would have for sure changed the spelling of his last name. Indeed if that would have been cause for a name change then Muggeridge as a surname would cease to exist. The interest in sexuality was also speculated to Leland Stanford; speaking personally I can never understand how this part of people's lives has the remotest bit of interest. The intimate details of people in the past quite frankly bore me. What could a person possibly get out of the sex life or lust of people of a bygone era? I have absolutely no interest in the sex life or lusts of any famous person now. It would be rather like someone standing in a park or from a roof top bawling out their dirty secrets, dirty magazine articles, their diaries and even help us love letters! In the words of Oscar Wilde it is like washing your dirty laundry in public! Otherwise it is a very interesting book and fortunately I know how to say Maria without the pronunciation key. It tells in a very interesting way about early history of film making (or in those days moving pictures, people for the longest time called films, pictures first, the term "movies" was coined much later). I didn't know before this book quite how ruthless Thomas Edison was in his business. There is a lot more to read about the history of film and I think this book is a very good introduction into this field of history.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In its format, this book reminded me very much of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Both books feature a narrative about a murderer juxtaposed against a major event. In this book it is Leland Stanford's building of a railroad and gentrifying the West Coast happening alongside an Englishman's murder of his wife. It so happens that the Englishman also was an accomplished photographer and inventor.

I found both Leland Stanford and Edward Muybridge to be interesting characters. I also enjoyed mention of California towns that I know well: Calistoga, Napa, San Francisco and Hanford. It was fun to learn about these areas at their beginning.

I think that Erik Larson is a talented author and wove his narrative more skillfully. This book used too much speculation, particularly when writing about Edward Muybridge's early life in England.

I enjoyed learning about Edward Muybridge. Evidently he invented the first motion picture machine. Edison learned of his device and later created and commercialized motion picture technology. Muybridge is a fascinating but now largely forgotten figure in early California history.

[Florence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Ball has covered two paramount events of the late nineteenth century through the lives of two men. Both had modest beginnings. Leland Stanford was a California railroad tycoon and the founder of Stanford University. Eadward Muybridge developed a process that was the forerunner of the modern motion picture. Both men had deeply compromised characters and were not highly regarded by the author. Perhaps the greed of Mr. Stanford and the criminal history of Mr. Muybridge gave the book added nuance. In any case, it was a captivating tale of the gilded age, including the history of the railroad. While reading, I was comprehensively absorbed in that time period. I won't forget the description of a cross country trip from west coast to east, via stagecoach, for those who couldn't afford the railroad. It took 25 days to travel 2,800 miles inside a dusty shaking cab - "a dirty, boring, migraine making trip", with stops at dingy inns along the way. And I thought air travel was uncomfortable.

[judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a huge amount of guilt because I didn't enjoy this book. In fact, I skimmed it rather intently just to get what I wanted. The author has done a huge amount of research on his subjects and has presented them as well as anyone could. I accept his premise about the moving pictures but would have enjoyed it much more if he had compressed it into 50 pages with pictures. As it was, I felt like he ordered the story in a way that allowed him to keep going back and virtually repeating things he had said earlier. I don't know if this was just to make a decent sized book or because he sincerely wanted us to understand the times and the importance of his subjects. I can't recommend this book to anyone I know--however, there are some meticulous history buffs interested in this period and the subjects who may be delighted with it. Since I do appreciate good scholarship, I will read his earlier national book award-winning Slave in the Family. I have no doubt that I will enjoy that.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I totally thought this book would be my jam, but ended up being pretty disappointed. In an effort to build suspense (I think), the author jumped around in time so much as to make the narrative feel completely, and unnecessarily, jumbled. Also, the very sensationalized way that the murder Muybridge committed was hyped up in the beginning of the book made it anticlimactic when the story was finally told. And I wasn't a huge fan of the style this was written in--a lot of "perhaps Stanford felt this" or "maybe Muybridge thought about this" statements throughout, which became grating very quickly. I actually found the story of Stanford to be the most interesting--and I enjoyed learning more about both the building of the railroad from coast to coast and the early days of photography and moving pictures. I just found that reading this was a bit of a slog and something I put off, rather than something I was excited about.

[Ken Bickley · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Cliffie used to say (on "Cheers"), "It's a little-known fact ...." Well, this book is crammed with little-known facts. Muybridge's photos illustrating motion are well-known and notorious (because he preferred to use nude models), and the story of his being enlisted by Central Pacific Railroad tycoon Leland Stanford to prove all four hooves were off the ground at the same time when a horse runs has been told on at least two old western TV series. But the transformation of English immigrant Ted Muggeridge into photographer Helios and then into Eadward Mugridge before becoming Eadward Muybridge is a history of its own. Throw in the venality of Stanford and the gilded age murder mentioned in the sub-title and you have a bang-up adventure story that reads like a novel. Along the way you'll learn how Palo Alto, California and Stanford University (and ultimately Silicon Valley) came to be. It's well worth reading.

[Larry Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been vaguely aware of the work of Edweard Muybridge in capturing images of horses in motion. But, I was unaware of the fascinating story of the individual. He was a notorious murderer in an early example of the celebrity media trial. Despite that, he was instrumental in starting the moving images industry, losing out to others for the wealth and notoriety he may have deserved. Add to that the strange fact that he had Leland Stanford, rail baron and governor of California, as a patron. This is an in interesting book with two or three detailed and fascinating character profiles combined with a history of early moving picture technology.

[Cara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eadweard Muybridge is known for his relatively minor part in the history of photography and also for killing his wife's boyfriend, and Leland Stanford is known for being a robber baron and the founder of Stanford University. If neither of these people seems all that interesting to you, you're not alone. A good author can make a subject that initially seems boring very interesting. That's what I was expecting with this book. But I just kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. It never got interesting.