Louis Le Prince

For the composer, see Louis Le Prince (composer).

Louis Le Prince
Le Prince c. early 1860s
Born
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince

(1841-08-28)28 August 1841
Metz, France
Disappeared16 September 1890
Dijon, France
StatusDeclared dead on 16 September 1897 (aged 56)
Occupation(s)Artist, art teacher, inventor
Spouse
Sarah Elizabeth Le Prince-Whitley
​
​
(m. 1869)​
ChildrenGabriella Marie (1870), Louis Adolphe (1872), Henriette Aimee (1874), Joseph Albert Augustin (1875), Leon Fernand (1877)

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (28 August 1841 – disappeared 16 September 1890, declared dead 16 September 1897) 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 (paper) film.[1][2] He has been credited as the "Father of Cinematography",[3] but his work did not influence the commercial development of cinema—owing largely to the events surrounding his 1890 disappearance.[4][5]

A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince's motion-picture experiments culminated in 1888 in Leeds, England.[6] In October of that year, he filmed moving-picture sequences of family members in Roundhay Garden and his son Louis playing the accordion, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film.[7] At some point in the following eighteen months he also made a film of Leeds Bridge. This work may have been slightly in advance of the inventions of contemporaneous moving-picture pioneers, such as the British inventors William Friese-Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, and was years in advance of that of Auguste and Louis Lumière and William Kennedy Dickson (who did the moving image work for Thomas Edison).

Le Prince was never able to perform a planned public demonstration of his camera in the US because he mysteriously vanished; he was last known to be boarding a train on 16 September 1890.[1] Multiple conspiracy theories have emerged about the reason for his disappearance, including: a murder set up by Edison, secret homosexuality, disappearance in order to start a new life, suicide because of heavy debts and failing experiments, and a murder by his brother over their mother's will. No conclusive evidence exists for any of these theories. In 2004, a police archive in Paris was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man bearing a strong resemblance to Le Prince who was discovered in the Seine just after the time of his disappearance,[7] but it has been claimed that the body was too short to be Le Prince.[8]

In early 1890, Edison workers had begun experimenting with using a strip of celluloid film to capture moving images. The first public results of these experiments were shown in May 1891.[9] However, 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 Edison against the American Mutoscope Company. This suit claimed that Edison was the first and sole inventor of cinematography, and thus entitled to royalties for the use of the process. Adolphe was involved in the case but was not allowed to present his father's two cameras as evidence, although films shot with cameras built according to his father's patent were presented. Eventually the court ruled in favour of Edison. A year later that ruling was overturned,[9] but Edison then reissued his patents and succeeded in controlling the US film industry for many years.[9]

Le Prince was a Freemason,[10] initiated into the Lodge of Fidelity No. 289 in Leeds in 1876,[11] he later demitted in 1880.

  1. ^ a b "BBC Education – Local Heroes Le Prince Biography". Archived from the original on 28 November 1999. Retrieved 27 May 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), BBC, archived on 28 November 1999
  2. ^ Howells, Richard (Summer 2006). "Louis Le Prince: the body of evidence". Screen. 47 (2). Oxford, UK: Oxford Journals: 179–200. doi:10.1093/screen/hjl015.
  3. ^ "The 'Father' Of Kinematography: Leeds Memorial Pioneer Work In England". The Manchester Guardian (1901–1959), Manchester, England 13 December 1930: 19.
  4. ^ Fischer, Paul (2022). The Man who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781982114824.
  5. ^ Greenblatt, Leah (14 April 2022). "He Created the First Known Movie. Then He Vanished. In his new book, The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, Paul Fischer investigates the life – and mysterious disappearance – of Louis Le Prince". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
  6. ^ "Louis Le Prince, who shot the world's first film in Leeds". BBC. 24 August 2016.
  7. ^ a b "Pioneers of Early Cinema: 1, Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (1841–1890?)" (PDF). www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk. p. 2. Retrieved 25 November 2012. he developed a single-lens camera which he used to make moving picture sequences at the Whitley family home in Roundhay and of Leeds Bridge in October 1888. ... it has been claimed that a photograph of a drowned man in the Paris police archives is that of Le Prince.
  8. ^ "The tragedy of Louis Le Prince". www.acmi.net.au. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
  9. ^ a b c Spehr, Paul (2008). The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson. United Kingdom: John Libbey Publishing Ltd.
  10. ^ Fischer, Paul (2022). The man who invented motion pictures: a true tale of obsession, murder and the movies. London: faber. ISBN 978-0-571-34864-0.
  11. ^ Scarth, Alfred; Braim, Charles (1894). History of the Lodge of Fidelity, No. 289, Leeds from 1792 to 1893: Including a Short Account of Freemasonry in Leeds During the Eighteenth Century, and of the Provincial Grand Lodges of the County of York and of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Beck and Inchbold.