FROZEN IN TIME

In August 1947, National Geographic published a series of photographs by Harold Edgerton of a ruby-throated hummingbird frozen in flight. The photos represented two groundbreaking inventions important to our appreciation of hummingbirds today.

The first was the creation of the electric flash, which could emit a burst of light that lasted 1/100,000 of a second. That made it possible to capture images our eyes couldn’t see, including a hovering hummingbird’s wings. This allowed bird enthusiasts to appreciate these tiny dynamos in detail previously unseen.

The second invention was the feeder that attracted the attention of that ruby-throated hummingbird. It was a blown-glass sugarwater feeder devised by Laurence Webster, who made it to feed hummingbirds in his New England gardens. National Geographic readers were immediately transfixed by the concept of feeding hummingbirds and wanted feeders of their own. In 1950 Audubon Novelty Company released the first commercially available hummingbird feeder and called it “the Webster Hanging Feeder.”