Notable People

31 January 1902

161, King's Road, Kingston-on-Thames

President Jordan

Stanford University

Dear Sir,

I duly received your esteemed form of 26 Dec last, and note with much pleasure your communication of the two books you have been good enough to accept for the library of the University over which you preside, and I therefore beg to say that well knowing your own views in regard to scientific research, and having at my command a few copies of the works, I shall feel delighted to place a copy of either or both of them at your disposal, should you be able to make use of them.

With regard to the zoopraxiscope, I am afraid I did not express myself with sufficient lucidity, it was not the apparatus with which the pictures were made, that I intended to recommend to your favorable consideration, but the instrument by means of which the various photographed phases are consecutively projected on a screen for the synthetical reconstruction of the original movement, this apparatus I devised, on the system originated by Plateau [Plato] and was used by me at the many universities and the other institutions of science and art in America and in Europe where my lectures on animal locomotion were given, and

Stanford maintain an apparent undiminished interest in this subject, will you kindly permit me to inquire whether it is within the province of the Leland Stanford Junior University to [?] or aid in any marked [?] original research; and whether you would approve--or better--be willing to promote and assist such an investigation as I prepare.

It was an agreeable surprise to me while recently travelling in Europe to find that the University of Pennsylvania was chiefly know there through its association with investigations of animal locomotion.

I have made no mention of this matter in any way to Mr Stanford, prefering to first communicate with you, and to afford you an opportunity of proposing it to him should you feel so inclined.

I believe the work can be more successfully carried on in California than anywhere else, and it

would be some satisfaction to me, and it might be so also to Mr Stanford that the investigation of this [?] of motion should be completed, where it was commenced.

I am Dear Sir Yours Faithfully

Eadweard Muybridge

Presdt David Starr Jordan, AM, MD Leland Stanford Junior University Palo Alto California

Room 755 Palace Hotel San Francisco, Cal.

5 April 1892

My dear Sir

A conversation which I, this morning had with one of the trustees of your University, has led me to question the advisability of my coming to Palo Alto, prepared to give a lecture on the science of animal locomotion, without first having received a formal invitation from you to do so.

I was induced to offer my services to you for one or a course of

Philadelphia 24 February 1897 Dr David Starr Jordan President of the Leland Stanford Junior University Palo Alto California

Dear Sir:

A few days ago, while looking over some of the results of my preliminary investigation of animal locomotion made in California 1872 to 1881, I found two series of transparent positives, and a negative, illustrating the stride of a canter by a pony when ridden by the young gentleman from whom your university derives its name. Thinking they would