Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton of Aurora Lodge 68 in Nebraska, used stroboscopes to study synchronous motors for his doctoral thesis in electrical engineering at MIT in 1931. One day in his lab, he pointed his "strobe" at a stream coming out of a faucet and was amazed when he could see the individual drops of water. Brother Edgerton went on to become a professor at MIT and a giant in the electrical engineering field, but continued pointing his strobes at common objects and photographing them, developing the science of stroboscopic photography. He photographed bouncing balls, golf swings hummingbirds, bullets in flight and in general, anything that moved. Soon, Edgerton's photographs of everyday events were winning worldwide acclaim and, in 1937, the New York Museum of Modern Art featured his iconic photograph of a milk drop creating a coronet. Amazingly, today we remember this great scientist more for his artistic work, and it all started with a playful student and a stream of water.
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