Harold “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990) turned a lab tool, the stroboscope (also known as the strobe, very short-duration flash), into a commonly-available device. As with many luminary Nebraskans, what powers he had in his left brain he complimented with imagination and creativity from his right, combining his technical innovations with groundbreaking artistry in stop-motion photography.

Edgerton earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Nebraska in 1925, whereupon he accepted a one-year research position with General Electric in Schenectady, NY, where he saw a stroboscope — a cumbersome lab instrument — for the first time. He had been schooled in photography by his uncle Ralph, a studio photographer, back in Nebraska, and immediately grasped the possibilities in marrying the two technologies.

He started graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1926; he would receive his Master's degree in 1927 and his Ph.D. in 1931 from that institution; he would serve on MIT's faculty for the rest of his life. His early work there was focused on improving and miniaturizing the strobe, improving its stop-motion flash effect. In 1937, he teamed with photographer Gjon Mili, using multiple flash units and the stroboscope to create art. The strobe flashed up to 120 times per second, making the camera appeared to freeze movement. Along with Edgerton's improvements in motion picture cameras, which took speeds from a maximum of 250 frames per second to six thousand, Edgerton revolutionized high speed photography, both still and in motion. The strikingly beautiful still images — of things like a bullet passing through an apple, or a milk drop splashing in a plate — hang in museums worldwide; the latter was included in the Museum of Modern Art's first photography exhibition, presented in 1937. The image in the background of this page, "Girl Running," is held in the collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art. A short film he made, titled "Quicker'n a Wink," won an Oscar in 1940. He would later team with the Department of Defense for nighttime aerial reconnaissance photography in World War II, and with Jacques Cousteau on undersea adventures.

"Doc" Edgerton died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Jan. 4, 1990, of a heart attack while having lunch at the MIT Faculty Club. All through his life, he was a son of Nebraska and its university, and of his hometown, Aurora, to which he returned often. The Edgerton Explorit Center was dedicated in his memory there in 1995; MIT operates a similar hands-on science center, the MIT Edgerton Center.

video: "Quicker'n A Wink"
at Nebraska: Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award