Louis Le Prince
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion-picture camera, and director of Roundhay Garden Scene. He was possibly the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of film. He has been credited as the "Father of Cinematography" but, due to his disappearance in 1890, his work did not influence the commercial development of cinema.
In October 1888, Le Prince filmed moving-picture sequences of family members in Leeds, in the 1888 short film Roundhay Garden Scene, and the Accordion Player, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film. In the next eighteen months, he also made the short film Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge. His work appears to precede the inventions of his contemporaries, such as Friese-Greene and Donisthorpe as well as being years ahead of the Lumière brothers and Dickson. Le Prince disappeared on 16 September 1890. Numerous conspiracy theories emerged about his disappearance, including murder, disappearance in order to start a new life, and suicide. However, no conclusive evidence was found for any of these theories.
In early 1890, Edison workers had begun experimenting with celluloid film to capture moving images. The first public results of these experiments were shown in May 1891. Le Prince's widow and son, Adolphe, were keen to advance Louis's cause as the inventor of cinematography. In 1898, Adolphe appeared as a witness for the defence in a court case brought by Thomas Edison against the American Mutoscope Company, in which Edison claimed to be the first and sole inventor of cinematography, and thus entitled to royalties for the use of the process. Film shot with cameras built according to Le Prince's patent were presented. Eventually, the court ruled in Edison's favour, however, a year later that ruling was overturned, but Edison reissued his patents and succeeded in controlling the US film industry for many years.
Seven years after his disappearance, Le Prince was declared dead on 16 September 1897.
Early life and education
Le Prince was born on 28 August 1841 in Metz. His family referred to him as "Augustin" and English-speaking friends would later call him "Gus". Le Prince's father was a major of artillery in the French Army and an officer of the Légion d'honneur. When growing up, he reportedly spent time in the studio of his father's friend, the pioneer of photography Louis Daguerre, from whom Le Prince may have received some lessons on photography and chemistry before he was 10 years old. His education went on to include the study of painting in Paris and post-graduate chemistry at Leipzig University, which provided him with the academic knowledge he was to utilise in the future.Career
Le Prince moved to Leeds, England in 1866, after being invited to join John Whitley, a friend introduced by a former university lecturer, in Whitley Partners of Hunslet, a firm of brass founders making valves and components. In 1869 he married Sarah Elizabeth Whitley, John's sister and a talented artist. When in Paris during their honeymoon, Le Prince repeatedly visited a magic show, fascinated by an illusion with moving transparent figures, presumably a dancing skeleton projection at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin with multiple reflections of mirrors focused on one point or a variation of Pepper's Ghost.Le Prince and his wife started a school of applied art, the Leeds Technical School of Art, and became well renowned for their work in fixing coloured photographs on to metal and pottery, leading to them being commissioned for portraits of Queen Victoria and the long-serving prime minister William Gladstone produced in this way; these were included alongside other mementos of the time in a time capsule—manufactured by Whitley Partners of Hunslet—which was placed in the foundations of Cleopatra's Needle on the embankment of the River Thames.
In 1881, Le Prince went to the United States as an agent for Lincrusta Walton, staying in the country along with his family once his contract had ended. He became the manager for a small group of French artists who produced large panoramas, usually of famous battles, that were exhibited in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
During this time he began experiments relating to the production of 'moving' photographs, designing a camera that utilised sixteen lenses, which was the first invention he patented. Although the camera was capable of 'capturing' motion, it wasn't a complete success because each lens photographed the subject from a slightly different viewpoint and thus the image would have jumped about, if he had been able to project it.
After his return to Leeds in May 1887, Le Prince built a single-lens camera in mid-late 1888. An experimental model was developed in a workshop at 160 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds and used to shoot his motion-picture films. It was first used on 14 October 1888 to shoot what would become known as Roundhay Garden Scene and a sequence of his son Adolphe playing the accordion. Le Prince later used it to film road traffic and pedestrians crossing Leeds Bridge. The film was shot from Hicks the Ironmongers, now the British Waterways building on the south east side of the bridge and marked with a commemorative Blue plaque.
Disappearance
In September 1890, Le Prince was preparing for a trip to the United States, supposedly to publicly premiere his work and join his wife and children. Before this journey, he decided to return to France to visit his brother in Dijon. Then, on 16 September, he took a train to Paris, but having taken a later train than planned, his friends in Paris discovered that he was not on board. He was never seen again by his family or friends, nor was the luggage he was traveling with ever found. The last person to see Le Prince at the Dijon station was his brother. The French police, Scotland Yard and the family undertook exhaustive searches, but never found him. Le Prince was officially declared dead in 1897. A number of mostly unsubstantiated theories have been proposed.Patent Wars assassination, "Equity 6928"
Christopher Rawlence pursues the assassination theory, along with other theories, and discusses the Le Prince family's suspicions of Edison over patents in his 1990 book and documentary The Missing Reel. Rawlence claims that at the time that he vanished, Le Prince was about to patent his 1889 projector in the UK and then leave Europe for his scheduled New York official exhibition. His widow assumed foul play though no concrete evidence has ever emerged and Rawlence prefers the suicide theory.In 1898, Le Prince's elder son Adolphe, who had assisted his father in many of his experiments, was called as a witness for the American Mutoscope Company in their litigation with Edison . By citing Le Prince's achievements, Mutoscope hoped to annul Edison's subsequent claims to have invented the moving-picture camera. Le Prince's widow Lizzie and Adolphe hoped that this would gain recognition for Le Prince's achievement, but when the case went against Mutoscope their hopes were dashed. Three years later, 28-year-old Adolphe was found dead on Fire Island near New York, having died by suicide by shooting himself through his forehead.
Disappearance ordered by the family
In 1966, Jacques Deslandes proposed a theory in Histoire comparée du cinéma, claiming that Le Prince voluntarily disappeared due to financial reasons and "familial conveniences". Journalist Léo Sauvage quotes a note shown to him by Pierre Gras, director of the Dijon municipal library, in 1977, that claimed Le Prince died in Chicago in 1898, having moved there at the family's request because he was homosexual; but he rejects that assertion.It is extremely likely that this wasn't at all true, as there is no evidence to suggest that Le Prince was gay.
Fratricide, murder for money
In 1967, Jean Mitry proposed, in Histoire du cinéma, that Le Prince was killed. Mitry notes that if Le Prince truly wanted to disappear, he could have done so at any time prior to that. Thus, he most likely never boarded the train in Dijon. He also wonders why his brother, who was the last person to have seen Le Prince alive and knew Le Prince was suicidal, didn't try to stop Le Prince, and why he didn't report Le Prince's mental state to the police before it was too late.Suspected drowning
A photograph of a drowned man pulled from the Seine in 1890, strongly resembling Le Prince, was discovered in 2003 during research in the Paris police archives. This led to the theory that he had failed to get his moving picture to work, had heavy debts, and thus chose to take his own life. However, it has been claimed that the body was too short to be Le Prince.Patents and cameras
On 10 January 1888, Le Prince was granted an American patent on a 16-lens device that he claimed could serve as both motion picture camera and a projector. That same day he took out a near-identical provisional patent for the same devices in Great Britain, proposing "a system of preferably 3, 4, 8, 9, 16 or more lenses". Shortly before the final version was submitted he added a sentence which described a single-lens system, but this was neither fully explained nor illustrated, unlike the several pages of description of the multi-lens system, meaning the single-lens camera was not legally covered by patent.This addendum was submitted on 10 October 1888 and, on 14 October, Le Prince used his single-lens camera to film Roundhay Garden Scene. During the period 1889–1890 he worked with the mechanic James Longley on various "deliverers" with one, two, three and sixteen lenses. The images were to be separated, printed and mounted individually, sometimes on a flexible band, moved by metal eyelets.
The single lens projector used individual pictures mounted in wooden frames. His assistant, James Longley, claimed the three-lens version was the most successful. Those close to Le Prince have testified to him projecting his first films in his workshop as tests, but they were never presented to anyone outside his immediate circle of family and associates and the nature of the projector is unknown.
In 1889, he took French-American dual citizenship in order to establish himself with his family in New York City and to follow up his research. However, he was never able to perform his planned public exhibition at the Morris–Jumel Mansion in Manhattan, in September 1890, due to his disappearance.