Notations in pen and pencil verso in Edgerton's hand: "Mosquito/ tries to sting a thumb but gives up". Selected frames from a movie taken at 1200 f.p.s./ Return to H. E. Edgerton." Stamp for Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier/ M.I.T."
Harold Edgerton, a Professor of Electrical Engineering at M.I.T., developed the electronic strobe. In 1931 he began to work with a former student, Kenneth Germeshausen; they were joined in 1934 by another former student, Herbert Grier. After WWII they formed a company that worked with atomic testing. These are still early experimental works.
This has echoes of Muybridge's studies of animals in motion, and has an artistic as well as scientific importance that I find more thrilling than Edgerton's later more self-consciously artistic photographs. These are the originals. (Larry Gottheim)
