now on booktv national book award-winning author edward ball recounts the relationship between edward mybridge, inventer of stop motion photography, and his patron, leland stanford, former governor of california. this is about an hour. >> the inventer and the tycoon is the story about two improbable friends, a man called leland stanford who was one of the early robber barons in the american west and a photographer called edward mybridge who was an artist. and they did not belong together, they met in an unlikely way, but over a period of ten years, these two men created, i think you can argue, some of the culture that we have of today which is the fascination we have with moving images. every day we, you know, wade through a river of motion pictures on our phones, on our computer screams, on our televisions -- screens, on our televisions, in movie houses. what is the statistic now, people are spending eight hours a day in front of a screen? we are screen-o-philic if you like. and the kernel that holds these media together is the image in motion. it's the thing that stops us when an image leaps