Lucien Bull - Early Life

Early Life

Born in Dublin, Ireland to British father, Cornelius Bull, and French mother, Gabrielle Joune, Bull lived his younger years in Dublin where he attended school and lived at home with his parents. Later in 1894, Bull moved to France to visit his aunts. After several months, Bull eventually settled in the area and became an assistant to Étienne-Jules Marey in 1895. At the time, Marey was working on the cinematographic, which was a camera that was shaped like a rifle and took pictures of moving objects from a rotating plate. This eventually became known as the “gun camera.”

This camera was designed to investigate the study of motion. Basically, this “gun camera” was designed to take an object in motion and snap still shots. By taking these still shots, each movement made by the object was captured and then studied to analyze movement patterns that were unable to be studied before. The first successful film was taken in 1904 when Bull was able to film the flight of a fly at 1,200 frames per second.