cyclegraphy

MaryW commented on the word cyclegraphy

In 1915, two surgeons visited efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth (yes, the father in Cheaper by the Dozen):

The three men assembled in the Gilbreth family dining room, intending to make a motion picture. Drs. Eugene Pool and Frederick Bancroft were not unaware of Gilbreth's reputation for self-aggrandizement, and they knew he hoped to gain publicity from the meeting. Nevertheless, at Gilbreth's request and as his cameras recorded, they began to pantomime surgical procedures using his kitchen tools as implements — the first step in the motion-picture process that Gilbreth called cyclegraphy. Using a technique similar to one used by the earliest filmmakers to study physiology, Gilbreth attached small electric lamps to his subjects' fingers and then captured their movements with long exposures. The result was a kinetic map of light traced over blurred, ghostly figures (see photo). Gilbreth would model these traces into three-dimensional dioramas and then coax them into more “efficient” vectors. All that remained was to teach this perfected motion to his subjects.

C. Gainty | N Engl J Med 2016;374:109-111

January 14, 2016