Arthur Clarence Pillsbury facts for kids
Arthur Clarence Pillsbury (1870–1946) was an American photographer, inventor, and filmmaker. He was known for creating new ways to see the world, especially at an important time in history. Many people remember his amazing photos of Yosemite National Park, pictures of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and his special time-lapse videos of flowers. But Pillsbury also saw how film could help us understand science much faster.
Arthur was born in Medford, Massachusetts. His parents were both doctors. In 1883, his family moved to Auburn, California. He later became a student at Stanford University. In 1895, he rode his bicycle to Yosemite with his cousin and a friend from Stanford.
Pillsbury used photography in many different ways. His career started in 1895 when he took 60 photos in just one hour to record the first fraternity rush at Stanford University. He studied mechanical engineering at Stanford. Before leaving college, he invented a special slicer for looking at tiny things under a microscope. He also created a unique camera that could take wide, panoramic pictures. Two years later, he took this camera to the Yukon to photograph the new mining areas and towns. By 1900, he had photographed many famous places in the Western United States.
By 1909, Pillsbury started making movies, which helped science in new ways. His book, Picturing Miracles of Plant and Animal Life, published in 1937, describes his most important inventions. These inventions changed how we see the world today. Pillsbury believed in "Knowledge Commons." This meant he didn't patent his inventions. He thought that sharing new ideas freely would help everyone learn and create more quickly.
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire
Pillsbury used both his special panorama camera and regular cameras to take pictures right after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. These photos were seen all over the world. From 1903 to March 1906, he worked as a photojournalist for the San Francisco Examiner. Just one month before the earthquake, he left to start his own business, the Pillsbury Picture Company, in Oakland.
Pillsbury later remembered that he still had his Examiner press pass when the earthquake happened. He also knew many police officers. This helped him get to good spots to photograph the burning city. He used several cameras for his photos. One was the special panoramic camera he invented in 1897 as his senior project at Stanford. You can find many of his earthquake panoramas at the Library of Congress and on the ACPillsburyFoundation.com website.
His panorama camera was first used to document the Yukon gold rush from 1898 to 1899. In 1899, Pillsbury made a solo trip of 1,981 miles from the Yukon River's start to the Pacific Ocean. He also used his panorama camera for tall, vertical photos of nature. Many of these were made as d'orotones, a special type of photo. Over his career, he invented 21 different cameras for still photos and movies. These included the first time-lapse camera, which he started working on in 1910. This camera recorded the entire life cycle of plants, from sprouting to blossoming and dying. His "CineMicroscopy" and "flower dramatics" films were very popular in theaters and schools for many years.
In 1925, Pillsbury showed the first film from his microscopic motion picture camera. This camera allowed him to film tiny things at very high magnification, which was a huge scientific step. In 1929, he invented the first X-Ray motion picture camera. This invention changed how doctors prepared for surgery. He put these inventions into "Knowledge Commons." This meant they were shared freely so that new discoveries could help people faster, without being held back by people trying to make money from them.
In 1930, he invented the first undersea motion picture camera. He was the first filmmaker to use it. This historic filming happened in Pago-Pago Bay, American Samoa. Pillsbury used special color matching techniques he learned from his earlier work with flowers. This was also the first time-lapse movie to record the slow movements of sea life, making starfish appear to "dance." A short film on the ACPillsburyFoundation.com website shows this footage and other techniques he used, like filming waterfalls from the air in Yosemite.
For smaller photos, he liked to use 5x7 Graflex cameras. He developed these photos at his new business in Oakland. He sent them to many major newspapers around the world using special photo-wire machines he helped create for Hearst Newspapers from 1903 to 1906.
His photojournalism made him famous worldwide. It also led him to support John Muir in Muir's fight to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley. This valley, in the western part of Yosemite National Park, was at risk of becoming a reservoir for San Francisco.
Pillsbury used movies to try and save Hetch Hetchy. This became his main focus. He disagreed with the ideas of "Conservationism" and "Preservationism" at the time. "Conservationism," supported by Gifford Pinchot, meant "keep it until we need to use it." "Preservationism" meant keeping land as private property trusts. Pillsbury wanted public lands to be used in a way that protected rare plants and animals. Sadly, the Hetch Hetchy Valley was given to San Francisco in a political deal.
Pillsbury's 1912 movie, "Plant and Animal Life in Yosemite," was shown to the leaders of the National Parks at their meeting in October 1912.
After the earthquake, Pillsbury went back to being a landscape photographer. He bought a studio in Yosemite Valley. During this time, he also made art photos and started using movie cameras. He produced the first nature films, which he showed at his Studio of the Three Arrows in Yosemite. Here, he also invented the first time-lapse motion picture camera. He created it specifically to save the wild flowers of Yosemite. These flowers were being mowed too much and were in danger of disappearing.
His natural photos showed the wonder people felt when they saw Yosemite's beauty. His later inventions included the microscopic motion picture camera, the X-Ray motion picture camera, and the underwater motion picture camera. He did his work without using filters. As a photojournalist, he believed his job was to show things as they were. He felt that people should respect life, wildlife, and nature because humans are part of the natural world, not its rulers.
Yosemite
Pillsbury first arrived in Yosemite by bicycle in 1895. He was still a mechanical engineering student at Stanford University. He had heard stories about Yosemite from an old friend of his mother's, Susan B. Anthony. She was traveling through California speaking about women's suffrage, which is the right for women to vote. The young Pillsbury fell in love with Yosemite. In 1897, he bought a studio there. But his young wife did not want to spend summers in the wilderness and left him. Feeling sad, he took his new panorama camera, which was his senior project, to the Yukon. There, he photographed the new mining towns and fields.
Pillsbury often visited Yosemite after returning to the lower 48 states in 1899. He photographed famous people like John Muir, Galen Clark, George Fiske, and Theodore Roosevelt for Camera Craft Magazine in 1901. These photos were later made into postcards by the Pillsbury Picture Company. Pillsbury started making postcards with his photos as soon as the United States Congress allowed this new way of communication in 1898.
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and with the money from his photos, Pillsbury was able to achieve his dream. He had just left his job at the San Francisco Examiner to start the Pillsbury Picture Company. That same year, he bought the Studio of the Three Arrows in Yosemite. His background in biology and botany, encouraged by his doctor parents, made him notice that fewer and fewer types of wild flowers were growing in the meadows there. So, in 1912, he built the first time-lapse camera. He made the first nature movie showing a flower turning its face towards the sun. He also convinced the National Park Service to stop mowing the meadows to feed their horses.
His special cards of flowers, hand-tinted at his studio, were often framed. They were also used in the meadows to help people identify the many types of plants blooming there. His work in Yosemite included classic photos like those by Ansel Adams, and d'orotones, which were photos with amazing depth. He also took unique pictures of flowers and natural photos of people in Yosemite. His inventions, which later included the first microscopic motion picture camera, the X-Ray motion picture camera, and the first underwater motion picture camera, were used on his many lecture tours across the United States, England, and the South Seas. His nature films were shown in theaters, schools, clubs, and during his lectures. They helped people understand the need to protect nature after John Muir died in 1914.
In 1921, Pillsbury gave advice to photographers in a handbook about taking pictures at Yosemite National Park.
Missouri Botanical Garden
In 1927, Pillsbury helped set up and run a time-lapse film studio at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri. This studio was used to study plants and for botanical research.
Legacy
Four of Pillsbury's orotone photographs of Yosemite waterfalls were shown in an art exhibition about Yosemite. This exhibition traveled to the Autry National Center, the Oakland Museum of California, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art from 2006 to 2008.
His granddaughter, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, has written a book about Pillsbury's life.
