Harold Edgerton was an American engineer and photographer known for inventing the stroboscope in the 1930s. This device allowed him to capture extremely fast movements through strobe photography. Some of his most famous photos include milk droplets forming corona shapes and the exact moment of a football impacting a player's foot. Throughout his career, Edgerton received many honors for his technical innovations and artistic contributions to photography.

1. Harold Edgerton
• Harold Edgerton was born in 1903
in Fremont, Nebraska and died
1990.
• He is very well known
photographer and for the creation
of the Stroboscope. This is an
instrument used to make a
cyclically moving object appear to
be slow-moving, or stationary.
Famous quotes:
"Don't make me out to be an artist. I
am an engineer. I am after the
facts, only the facts.“
"In many ways, unexpected results are
what have most inspired my
photography."

2. Background
• 1925 he received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska.
• 1931 HE Developed and perfects the stroboscope, he used this to study synchronous
motors for his Sc.D. thesis in electrical engineering at MIT.
• In 1937 he began a lifelong association with photographer Gjon Mili, who used
stroboscopic equipment to produce strikingly beautiful photographs, many of which
appeared in Life Magazine.
• Edgerton was a pioneer in strobe photography, for example he used this technique to
capture images of balloons during bursting, a bullet during its impact with an apple. He was
awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Photographic Society in 1934, the Howard N. Potts
Medal in 1941, the Albert A. Michelson Award in 1969 and the National Medal of Science in
1973.
• He was a cofounder of the company EG&G, with Kenneth Germeshausen and Herbert
Grier in 1947. EG&G became a prime contractor for the Atomic Energy Commission and
had a major role in photographing and recording nuclear tests for the United States through
the 50’s and 60’s. For this role he developed the Rapatronic camera.
• His work was instrumental in the development of side-scan sonar technology, used to scan
the sea floor for wrecks.
• 1983 MIT dedicates “Strobe Alley” in Harold Edgerton’s honor.
• 1985 The Edgerton-Benthos underwater camera is used to photograph the sunken RMS
Titanic.
• January 4th 1990 died after having a heart attack at the age of 86.

3. Imagery
• This photo is one of Edgerton’s
most famous photos called ‘Milk
Drop Coronet’. He has created
many other very similar photos
to this one but this was his best.
• The way he has managed to
capture the milk forming a
crown shape reflects that he is a
pure genius.
• Each image like this one exists in
a numbered edition of 100 or
less and were taken using
standard cameras with an
electronic flash exposures
ranging from 1/50,000 to
1/1,000,000 of a second.

4. Imagery
• This is another one of his most
famous photos called ‘Wes Fesler
Kicking a Football’. It demonstrated
the dent in the ball at the point of
contact.
• Edgerton’s photos capture the exact
moment when something has made
contact with another object e.g. the
bullet going through an apple, as
well as things in motion showing
the different stages of that
movement e.g. a tennis player
doing a serve.

5. Bibliography
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Eugene_Edgerton
• http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/iconic
• http://mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/edgerton/www/timeline.pdf
• http://www.agallery.com/pages/photographers/edgerton.html
By Beulah