Running vs. trotting
I noticed a small inaccuracy in the March 2005 article "X-ray Blaze on an Invisible World." Horse people among your readers will instantly recognize that the horse in the photograph "Sallie Gardner" is running, not trotting. There are horses that race at the trot, but that breed of horse is called Standardbred, not Thoroughbred, and they pull a sulky; they are not ridden.
To resolve the inaccuracy in the article, you need to change only the references to trotting in a few places.
When those changes are made, horse people will continue reading without stopping to argue.
Sandra P. Arthur, Cincinnati, Ohio
Heather Rock Woods responds: Indeed the image does show a horse galloping, not trotting. However, Stanford and Muybridge's first photographs were actually taken of horses trotting (pulling a sulky, with its wheels rolling over wires to activate the cameras). We did not have access to those images for this article. Much controversy and many urban myths surround the story of Stanford and Muybridge. Readers who want to know more are urged to consult Muybridge: Man in Motion by Robert Bartlett Haas, Muybridge's biographer.
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