Exploring the Art and Science of Stopping Time

Harold E. Edgerton was the chief developer of the strobe, a scientist, teacher, inventor, entrepreneur and artist. His teaching philosophy was that having fun and satisfying curiosity were important parts of the most technical enterprise.

This CD-ROM aims to capture Edgerton's ideas and transmit them to a new generation. Users learn about his life and philosophy, enter his laboratory, play with some of the experiments he created and observe events that happened at high speed. Users can choose from three "rooms" - biography, archives and strobe alley.

In the biography room users explore a wide array of topics highlighting Edgerton's life and the impulses behind his work and examine an extensive library of film clips and other material. The archives room views Edgerton's visual work and explores how it was created and in strobe alley users can leaf through his explanatory videos and texts while they operate experiments that will help them to understand the dynamics of flowing water, bursting balloons, bouncing balls, rotating fans, find out what goes on inside a strobe in a camera and sample a set of 19th-century toys that stop and then reconnect flows of movement.