Arthur Clarence Pillsbury

Arthur Clarence Pillsbury (1870–1946) was a United States photographer, inventor, and filmmaker, known through his innovations which extended human vision at a critical time in our history.

Although many make the mistake of focusing on his sensational landscapes of Yosemite National Park, photos of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and time lapse photography of flowers, he had seen the potential of film for rapidly increasing our understanding in every part of science.

Pillsbury studied mechanical engineering at Stanford University and is credited with the invention of a specimen slicer (for microscopy) and a circuit panorama camera[1] before leaving college.

He had worked for the San Francisco Examiner as a photojournalist from 1903 to March 1906, but left to establish the Pillbury Picture Company, based in Oakland, just a month before the earthquake.

[2] Pillsbury later recalled that he still had his Examiner press pass when the earthquake hit the following month, and he knew many of the policemen, so was able to gain access to good locations to photograph panoramas of the burning city.

In 1925, Pillsbury first showed the film from his invention of the microscopic motion picture camera, a tandem inline, high magnification unprecedented scientific achievement.

Preservationism meant perpetual private property trusts vs. multi-use by public lands with politicians having many constituencies who overrun rare life forms from Sequoias to Wild Flowers.

In an act that violated these principles the Hetch Hetchy Valley was traded to San Francisco by in a competition between presidential candidates Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt for votes.

Pillsbury's 1912 movie, "Plant and Animal Life in Yosemite" was shown to the superintendents of the National Parks at their annual conference, which was held from October 14–16, 1912.

Here is also invented the first lapse-time motion picture camera for the specific purpose of saving the wild flowers of Yosemite that were then threatened with extinction from excessive mowing.

Despondent, he took his newly finished senior project, the first circuit panorama camera, and went to the Yukon where he photographed the opening of the mining towns and fields.

His background in biology and botany, encouraged by his parents who were both medical doctors, made him aware of the steady reduction in the number and types of wild flowers that blossomed in the meadows there.

So in 1912 he built the first lapse-time camera, made the first nature movie showing the dance of a flower raising its face to the sun and managed to persuade the National Park Service to stop the practice of mowing the meadows to produce fodder for their horses.

His many nature films, eventually shown in theaters as well as in schools, clubs and for his lecture tours awakened the public to the need for conservation in the wake of Muir's death in 1914.