Cyclography

a method of studying human movements by successively photographing (up to hundreds of times a minute) marks or electric bulbs attached to moving parts of the body.

The French scientist E. J. Marey in the 1880’s was the first to suggest photographing the phases of movement. Cyclography was modified and improved by N. A. Bernshtein in the 1920’s. Bernshtein proposed kymocyclography, that is, photographing on a moving film. The analysis of cyclograms (cyclogrammetry) for several movements yielded data on the path of individual points of the body and on the velocity and acceleration of moving parts of the body. The information made it possible to compute the magnitudes of the forces responsible for a given movement. It also served as the foundation of modern conceptions of the principles of the control of bodily movements, used to study motor disorders and the movements made by athletes. Motion-picture photography of movements and the subsequent analysis of frames, which resemble cyclograms, is similar to cyclography.