First Horse Race Photo Finish,1888

Finish-line picture of race winner was taken in New Jersey.

Dec 18, 2008

Ernest Marks, an official racing association photographer, took the photo in the summer at Plainfield, New Jersey.

Marks had a darkroom onsite, and in about three minutes he produced a negative for the judges. This image has not been found. The earliest known photo of the finish of a race to survive was taken on June 25, 1890 by John C. Hemment in New York in the borough of Brooklyn at the Sheepshead Bay Race Track. The track was the site of races sponsored by the Coney Island Jockey Club. Hemment's photo captured the great black jockey Issac "Ike" Murphy (1861-1896) on his mount defeating jockey Edward "Snapper" Garrison on his mount.

Murphy was the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby three times. His mount in winning the 1884 Derby was Buchanan; Riley in 1890; and Kingman in 1891. View the Hemment photo of the New York race on page 263 of The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America's First National Sport ( Edward Hotaling ,1999).

Problem With Early Photos

In a letter published in the May 1882 issue of the magazine Nature, fast-action photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge wrote that "in the near future" important races would rely on "photography to determine the winner." It took decades, however, for finish-line photography to be perfected. The main problem was that a sole camera with a horizontal shutter that took one photo could not capture all the top finishers at the moment they reached the finish line.

By the 1930s, one or several cameras employing shutters that were tripped automatically at the finish were being used. However, there was still one big problem: a lone camera with a horizontal shutter making one picture favored the outside horse. The reason was that as the shutter was closing, it captured the inside horse at the top of the frame first and the outside horse at the bottom of the frame last. Before the shutter closed completely, the outisde horse could travel another five inches or so.

Strip Camera Introduced

Eventually, the strip camera solved the problem. This camera has a very narrow vertical slit instead of a shutter. Loaded with roll or high-speed film and placed at a high vantage point, it can record the action at the finish line at the speed at which the horses move, about 55 feet per second. Though this camera is still used today, increasingly finish-line cameras are digital. Digital cameras use neither a slit nor film. And the photo from them can be produced almost instantaneously. The positions of the horses' noses determine the order of finish.

Mullinix, Penny. "The First Photo Finish Camera." In Horse Racing's Top 100 Moments. Lexington: Eclipse Press, 2006.

Gernsheim, Helmut in Collaboration with Alison Gernsheim. The History of Photography From the Earliest Use of the Camera Obscura in the Eleventh Century Up to 1914. London: Oxford University Press. 1955.,

The copyright of the article First Horse Race Photo Finish,1888 in Thoroughbred Racing is owned by Linda N. Riggins. Permission to republish First Horse Race Photo Finish,1888 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.