The Horse in Motion is a series of cabinet cards by Eadweard Muybridge, including six cards that each show a series of six to twelve "automatic electro-photographs" depicting successive phases in the movement of a horse, shot in June 1878. An additional card reprinted the single image of the horse "Occident" trotting at high speed, which had already been published in 1877.
The series became the first example of chronophotography, an early method to photographically record the passing of time, mainly used to document the different phases of locomotion for scientific study. It formed a very influential step in the development of motion pictures. One of the cards (often retitled Sallie Gardner at a Gallop) has even been hailed as "the world's first bit of cinema". Muybridge did project moving images from his photographs with his Zoopraxiscope, from 1880 to 1895, but these were painted on discs and his technology was no more advanced than earlier efforts by others (for instance those by Franz von Uchatius in 1853).
