Louis Le Prince: The fascinating mystery behind the inventor of cinema
As the Victorian era began to near its end and the turn of the century quickly approached, technology started to progress at an incredibly fast pace. The recent Industrial Revolution inspired people to develop new ways of living, and soon enough, inventions such as lightbulbs and phonographs (an early precursor of the gramophone) came to fruition.
Many of these major inventions, such as the ones listed above, were courtesy of Thomas Edison and his workers. The businessman was one of the era’s most prominent figures, and he worked hard to ensure his name was associated with the biggest inventions of the time. He is widely credited with creating the first motion picture camera, the Kinotograph, which he patented in 1891.
Yet, a few years prior to Edison’s invention, which was largely developed by his assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a Frenchman named Louis Le Prince created a device with which he successfully filmed the world’s first moving picture. The short recording, Roundhay Garden Scene, was filmed in Leeds, where Le Prince had moved for work and subsequently remained with his wife, Elizabeth Whitley.
Developing a motion picture camera was just a hobby of Le Prince’s, although he was very passionate about doing so. He eventually created a workshop at 160 Woodhouse Lane, located near what is now the University of Leeds campus, where he developed his camera. In 1888, he recorded Roundhay Garden Scene alongside a recording of Leeds Bridge, which is now commemorated with a blue plaque. Le Prince’s films, only a few seconds in length, are widely considered to be the oldest surviving moving pictures in cinema history.
However, shortly after he was set to debut his invention in New York, Le Prince went missing. The inventor had travelled to France to sort out family matters with his brother before heading to the United States, yet he never made it across the pond. Unfortunately, Le Prince was never seen again, although due to his travels, his friends and family were not aware of his disappearance straight away. He was declared dead seven years later, in 1897, although his body was never found.
There have been many theories surrounding Le Prince’s death ever since, with his family believing that he was possibly murdered by Edison so that the ambitious inventor could take credit for the first motion picture camera, not Le Prince. Edison’s invention was rather similar to Le Prince’s, which the latter had made first, rousing suspicion in Le Prince’s family.
Paul Fischer, who wrote The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, told ABC that when a newspaper announced Edison’s invention, Le Prince’s wife was in shock. “As Elizabeth is reading it, [she realised] it sounds exactly like what Louis was working on — and was about to make a fortune from.” While it is an interesting theory that Edison ordered Le Prince to be killed, the theory is rather unlikely to be true – Edison could have filed a caveat, as he so often did, rather than resort to cold-blooded murder.
Other theories include Le Prince being murdered by his brother, that he disappeared due to potentially being a secret homosexual or that he killed himself due to massive financial debts. We might never know what happened to Le Prince; however, one thing is for certain – his pioneering contributions to cinema deserve greater recognition.
