Muybridge had been experimenting with snapshot cameras, as in those days instantaneous photography with wet plates was comparatively new, and, being something of an artist as well as a photographer, he decided that snapshot photographs of animals and men while running, jumping, and walking would greatly aid artists in transferring to their canvases the exact positions of the figures they wished to paint. In 1872 the people of California were considerably excited over the feat of Governor Leland Stanford's trotting horse Occident, which was the first racer west of the Rocky Mountains to make a mile in two minutes and twenty seconds, and the Governor was having him photographed on every occasion. Governor Stanford also wagered that at one time during the trotter's stride all four feet were off the ground. Muybridge suggested his plan for photographing the animal's every movement, while running, trotting or walking, as a means of settling the bet, and the Governor, very much pleased, gave him free access to the stables and race course. The photographer built a studio at the course and systematically went to work. First, he built a high fence along the track and had it painted white. Then he securely mounted twenty-four cameras side by side along the opposite side of the course and stretched thin silk threads from the shutter of each camera across the track about the height of the horse's knees. Occident was then led out and ridden along the course so that he would pass between the white background and twenty-four cameras. As he came to each silk thread his legs broke it and opened the shutter of the camera to which it was attached. Thus the animal photographed himself twenty-four times as he passed over the track and showed that Governor Stanford's contention regarding his movements was correct. Laid in consecutive order in which the photographs were taken, each picture showed a different stage of the horse's movements, and if the series of photographs was held together and riffled over the thumb, so that each one would be visible for just the fraction of a second, the impression received, thanks to the persistence of vision, was that of a horse in motion. When Muybridge went to Paris the year after taking the photographs of Governor Stanford's horse he received a warm welcome from some of the greatest French painters of the day. He gave several exhibits of his photographs, but carried the work no farther.