Etienne-Jules Marey was one of those scientists who dabbled in many branches of the sciences. In order to facilitate his study of animals, he developed an early form of motion pictures, and this is his earliest surviving work. It is a picture of a mosquito taking flight.
As such, it is of great historical significance, for pride of place, if nothing else. He invented the chronophotography gun, which took sixteen pictures in short order on a single sheet of film. It must have been a cumbersome device, and transferring the results to a usefully viewable medium seems to have been, well, uncommercial. Another interesting dead end in the evolution of cinema.
