Louis Le Prince
Encyclopedia
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (born Metz
28 August 1841, vanished 16 September 1890) was an inventor who is considered by many film historians as the true father of motion pictures, who shot the first moving pictures on paper film using a single lens camera.
A Frenchman
who also worked in the United Kingdom
and the United States
, Le Prince conducted his ground-breaking work in 1888 in the city of Leeds
, West Yorkshire
, England
, UK
.
In October 1888, Le Prince filmed moving picture sequences Roundhay Garden Scene
and a Leeds Bridge
street scene using his single-lens camera and Eastman
's paper film. These were several years before the work of competing inventors such as Auguste and Louis Lumière
and Thomas Edison
.
He was never able to perform a planned public demonstration in the United States because he mysteriously vanished from a train on 16 September 1890. His body and luggage were never found, but, over a century later, a police archive was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man who could have been him.
on a 16-lens device that combined a motion picture camera
with a projector. A patent for a single-lens type (MkI) was refused in America because of an interfering patent, yet a few years later the same patent was not opposed when the American Thomas Edison
applied for one.
On October 14, 1888, Le Prince used an updated version (MkII) of his single-lens camera to film Roundhay Garden Scene
. He exhibited his first films in the Whitley factory in Hunslet
, Leeds and in Oakwood Grange, the Whitley home in Roundhay
, Leeds, but they were not distributed to the general public.
The following year, 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 Jumel Mansion, New York, in September 1890, due to his mysterious disappearance. Consequently, Le Prince's contribution to the birth of the cinema has often been overlooked.
, France
, on 28 August 1841. His father was a major of artillery in the French Army
and an officer of the Légion d'honneur
. He grew up spending time in the studio of his father's friend, the photography
pioneer Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre
, from whom the young Le Prince received lessons relating to photography and chemistry
and for whom he was the subject of a Daguerrotype, an early type of photograph. 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.
, West Yorkshire
, UK in 1866, after being invited to join John Whitley, a friend from college, in Whitley Partners of Hunslet
, a firm of brass founders making valves and components. In 1869 he married Elizabeth Whitley, John's sister and a talented artist. The couple started a school of applied art, the Leeds Technical School of Art, in 1871, and became well renowned for their work in fixing colour photography 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, that 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 Whitley Partners, 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 panorama
s, usually of famous battles, that were exhibited in New York City
, Washington DC and Chicago
. During this time he continued the experiments he had begun, relating to the production of 'moving' photographs and to find the best material for film stock
.
During his time in the USA, Le Prince built a camera that utilised sixteen lenses and was his first invention to be 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 projected image jumped about.
After his return to Leeds in May 1887, Le Prince built and then patented, a single-lens camera. It was first used on 14 October 1888 to shoot what would become known as Roundhay Garden Scene
, presumably the world's first motion picture. Le Prince later used it to shoot tram
s and the horse-drawn and pedestrian traffic on Leeds Bridge (the movie was shot from Hicks the Ironmongers, now the British Waterways building, a building on the south east side of the bridge, a blue plaque marks the spot). These pictures were soon projected on a screen in Leeds, making it the first motion picture exhibition.
on 13 September to visit his brother in Dijon
. He would then take the 16 September train to Paris, but when the train arrived, his friends discovered that Le Prince was not on board. He was never seen again by his family or friends. No luggage nor corpse was found in the Dijon-Paris express nor along the railway. No one saw Le Prince at the Dijon station, except his brother. No one saw Le Prince in the Dijon–Paris express after he was seen boarding it. No one noticed strange behaviour or aggression in the Dijon-Paris express.
The French police, Scotland Yard
and the family undertook exhaustive searches but never found his body or luggage. This mysterious disappearance case was never solved. Four main theories have been proposed:
Le Prince was officially declared dead
in 1897. A photograph of a drowning victim from 1890 resembling Le Prince was discovered in 2003 during research in the Paris police archives.
, his work has been long forgotten since he disappeared on the eve of the first public demonstration of the result of years of toil in his Leeds workshop and test conducted at the New York Institute for the Deaf. His pursuit of trademarks over in the United States, the dominance and influence of his countryman rival Thomas Edison, founder of the oligopolistic
Edison Trust, became unstoppable.
For the April 1894 commercial exploitation of his personal kinetoscope
Parlor, Thomas Edison is credited as the inventor of cinema
in the USA, while in France, the Lumière Brothers, are coined inventors of the Cinématographe
device and inventor of cinema for the first, collective, commercial exploitation of motion picture films in Paris. Like Le Prince, another untold proto-cinema figure is the French inventor, Léon Bouly
, who created the first "Cinématographe" device and patented it in 1892 (Patent N°219,350). He was never credited, and two years later his left unpaid patent was bought by the Lumière Brothers (Patent N°245,032).
However, at Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the UK, Le Prince is celebrated as a local hero. On 12 December 1930, the Lord Mayor of Leeds unveiled a bronze memorial tablet at 160 Woodhouse Lane (then Auto Express Engineering Company), Le Prince's workshop. In 2003, the University
's "Centre for Cinema, Photography and Television" was named in his honour. Le Prince's workshop in Woodhouse Lane was until recently the site of the BBC
in Leeds. The former Blenheim Baptist chapel, at the junction of Woodhouse Lane and Blackman Lane, is next to the site. (coordinates: 53°48′20.58"N 1°32′56.74"W)
In France, an appreciation society was created as "Association des Amis de Le Prince" ("Association of LePrince's friends") which still exists in Lyon
.
In 1992, the Japan
ese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii
(Ghost in the Shell
) directed Talking Head
an avant-garde
feature film paying tribute to the cinematography history's tragic ending figures such as George Eastman
, Georges Méliès
and Louis Le Prince who is credited as "the true inventor of eiga", Japanese for "motion picture film".
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE CENTER ALIGN THIS TIME, THANKS...
Le Prince developed his single-lens type camera in a workshop at 160 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds. An updated version of this model was used to direct his motion-picture films. Remaining production consists of a scene in the garden at Oakwood Grange (his wife's family home, in Roundhay), another at Leeds Bridge and an Accordion Player.
These world's first motion picture films do not exist anymore, as Le Prince's body and effects disappeared two years later, but parts of the original paper film strips remaining in the camera (Mark II) were found and exploited later.
Half a century later, Le Prince's widow gave the remaining apparatus to the National Science Museum
, London
(it's now in the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT), Bradford
, which opened in 1983 and in 2006 was renamed the National Media Museum). In May 1931, photographic plates were produced by workers of the Science Museum from paper print copies provided by Marie Le Prince. In 1999, the copies were restored, remastered and re-animated to produce a digital version which was uploaded on to the NMPFT website as public resources ("Roundhay" & "Leeds"). These versions are running at the modern cinématographe
24 frames per second (frame/s
) rate (Roundhay Garden at 24.64 frame/s and Leeds Bridge at 23.50frame/s), but Le Prince used the frame-rate adjust device built into his apparatus to test various speeds. According to Adolphe Le Prince, who assisted his father at Leeds, Roundhay Garden is believed to have been shot at 12 frame/s and Leeds Bridge at 20 frame/s.
Since the NMPFT release, various names are used to designate the untitled films, such as "Leeds Bridge" or "Roundhay Garden Scene". Actually, all current online versions (e. g., GIF
, FLV
, SWF
, OGG
, WMV, etc.) are derived from the NMPFT files, and these tentative titles are not canon to Le Prince whose mother tongue was French. However, "Leeds Bridge" is believed to be the original title, as the traffic sequence was referred as such by Frederic Mason, Le Prince's mechanic.
An amateur remastering of all 16 frames is on YouTube
here. The individual frames used are on Flickr here.
The earliest frames copy belongs to the 1923 NMPFT inventory (frames 118-120 & 122-124), though a larger sequence comes from the 1931 inventory (frames 110-129). Digital footage produced by the NMPFT has 65 frames (run time 2.76 seconds at 23.50 frame/s) although the original Leeds Bridge film of 20 frames was shot by Le Prince's camera at 20 frame/s on a 60 mm film, according to Adolphe Le Prince who assisted his father when this film was shot in late October 1888.
. It was recorded on the steps of the house of Joseph Whitley, Adolphe's grandfather. The recording date is probably 1888. The NMPFT has not remastered this film. An amateur remastering of the first 17 frames is on YouTube
here.
Metz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
28 August 1841, vanished 16 September 1890) was an inventor who is considered by many film historians as the true father of motion pictures, who shot the first moving pictures on paper film using a single lens camera.
A Frenchman
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
who also worked in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Le Prince conducted his ground-breaking work in 1888 in the city of Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
In October 1888, Le Prince filmed moving picture sequences Roundhay Garden Scene
Roundhay Garden Scene
Roundhay Garden Scene is an 1888 short film directed by inventor Louis Le Prince. It was recorded at 12 frames per second, runs for 2.11 seconds and is the oldest surviving film.-Overview:...
and a Leeds Bridge
Leeds Bridge
Leeds Bridge is a historic river crossing in Leeds, England. The present cast iron road bridge dates from 1730. It is Grade II listed.The medieval town of Leeds centred on 13th century burgess building plots either side of a wide road from the river crossing called Bridge Gate, now Briggate...
street scene using his single-lens camera and Eastman
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
's paper film. These were several years before the work of competing inventors such as Auguste and Louis Lumière
Auguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
and Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
.
He was never able to perform a planned public demonstration in the United States because he mysteriously vanished from a train on 16 September 1890. His body and luggage were never found, but, over a century later, a police archive was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man who could have been him.
Forgotten inventor of motion pictures
The early history of motion pictures in the United States and Europe is marked by battles over patents of cameras. In 1888 Le Prince was granted an American dual-patentPatent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
on a 16-lens device that combined a motion picture camera
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
with a projector. A patent for a single-lens type (MkI) was refused in America because of an interfering patent, yet a few years later the same patent was not opposed when the American Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
applied for one.
Roundhay Garden Scene
Roundhay Garden Scene is an 1888 short film directed by inventor Louis Le Prince. It was recorded at 12 frames per second, runs for 2.11 seconds and is the oldest surviving film.-Overview:...
. He exhibited his first films in the Whitley factory in Hunslet
Hunslet
Hunslet is an inner-city area in south Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is south east of the city centre and has an industrial past.Hunslet had many engineering companies based in the district, such as John Fowler & Co...
, Leeds and in Oakwood Grange, the Whitley home in Roundhay
Roundhay
Roundhay is a large suburb and City Council ward of north-east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, largely within the LS8 postcode. The ward boundary is the A6120 ring road on the north and the A58 Wetherby Road on the south and east. The boundary follows Gledhow Valley Road to the west before heading...
, Leeds, but they were not distributed to the general public.
The following year, he took French-American dual citizenship in order to establish himself with his family in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and to follow up his research. However, he was never able to perform his planned public exhibition at Jumel Mansion, New York, in September 1890, due to his mysterious disappearance. Consequently, Le Prince's contribution to the birth of the cinema has often been overlooked.
Life
Childhood and school
Le Prince was born on Saint-Georges street in MetzMetz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, on 28 August 1841. His father was a major of artillery in the French Army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
and an officer of the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
. He grew up spending time in the studio of his father's friend, the photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
pioneer Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre
Louis Daguerre
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.- Biography :...
, from whom the young Le Prince received lessons relating to photography and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
and for whom he was the subject of a Daguerrotype, an early type of photograph. His education went on to include the study of painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and post-graduate chemistry at Leipzig University, which provided him with the academic knowledge he was to utilise in the future.
Adulthood
He moved to LeedsLeeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, UK in 1866, after being invited to join John Whitley, a friend from college, in Whitley Partners of Hunslet
Hunslet
Hunslet is an inner-city area in south Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is south east of the city centre and has an industrial past.Hunslet had many engineering companies based in the district, such as John Fowler & Co...
, a firm of brass founders making valves and components. In 1869 he married Elizabeth Whitley, John's sister and a talented artist. The couple started a school of applied art, the Leeds Technical School of Art, in 1871, and became well renowned for their work in fixing colour photography on to metal and pottery, leading to them being commissioned for portraits of Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
and the long-serving Prime Minister William Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
produced in this way, that were included alongside other mementos of the time in a time capsule
Time capsule
A time capsule is an historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians...
- manufactured by Whitley Partners of Hunslet - which was placed in the foundations of Cleopatra's Needle
Cleopatra's Needle
Cleopatra's Needle is the popular name for each of three Ancient Egyptian obelisks re-erected in London, Paris, and New York City during the nineteenth century. The London and New York ones are a pair, while the Paris one comes from a different original site where its twin remains...
on the embankment of the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
.
In 1881 Le Prince went to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as an agent for Whitley Partners, 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 panorama
Panorama
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model....
s, usually of famous battles, that were exhibited in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Washington DC and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. During this time he continued the experiments he had begun, relating to the production of 'moving' photographs and to find the best material for film stock
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
.
During his time in the USA, Le Prince built a camera that utilised sixteen lenses and was his first invention to be 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 projected image jumped about.
After his return to Leeds in May 1887, Le Prince built and then patented, a single-lens camera. It was first used on 14 October 1888 to shoot what would become known as Roundhay Garden Scene
Roundhay Garden Scene
Roundhay Garden Scene is an 1888 short film directed by inventor Louis Le Prince. It was recorded at 12 frames per second, runs for 2.11 seconds and is the oldest surviving film.-Overview:...
, presumably the world's first motion picture. Le Prince later used it to shoot tram
Tram
A tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
s and the horse-drawn and pedestrian traffic on Leeds Bridge (the movie was shot from Hicks the Ironmongers, now the British Waterways building, a building on the south east side of the bridge, a blue plaque marks the spot). These pictures were soon projected on a screen in Leeds, making it the first motion picture exhibition.
Suspicious disappearance
In September 1890, Le Prince was preparing to go back to the UK to patent his new camera, followed by a trip to the US to promote it. Before his journey, he decided to return home and visit friends and family. Having done so, he left BourgesBourges
Bourges is a city in central France on the Yèvre river. It is the capital of the department of Cher and also was the capital of the former province of Berry.-History:...
on 13 September to visit his brother in Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
. He would then take the 16 September train to Paris, but when the train arrived, his friends discovered that Le Prince was not on board. He was never seen again by his family or friends. No luggage nor corpse was found in the Dijon-Paris express nor along the railway. No one saw Le Prince at the Dijon station, except his brother. No one saw Le Prince in the Dijon–Paris express after he was seen boarding it. No one noticed strange behaviour or aggression in the Dijon-Paris express.
The French police, Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
and the family undertook exhaustive searches but never found his body or luggage. This mysterious disappearance case was never solved. Four main theories have been proposed:
- Perfect suicide:
- Le Prince's brother's grandson told film historian Georges Potonniée that Le Prince wanted to commit suicide because he was on the verge of bankruptcy. He had already arranged his suicide and he managed for his own body and belongings never to be found. However, Potonniée noted that Le Prince's business was profitable and that he was proud of his inventions, and thus had no reason to commit suicide.
- 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 (the Equity 6928) in his 1990 book and documentary The Missing Reel. 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 [Equity 6928]. By citing Le Prince's achievements Mutuscope 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. Two years later Adolphe Le Prince was found dead while out duck shooting on Fire Island near New York.
- 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 (already shown to be false) and "familial conveniences". Journalist Léo Sauvage backed up that assertion, quoting 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. There is no evidence to suggest that Le Prince was gay, however.
- 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, most likely he never even boarded the train in Dijon. He also questions that if the brother, who was confirmed to be the last person to see Le Prince alive, knew Le Prince was suicidal, why didn't he try to stop him, and why didn't he report this to the police before it was too late?
Le Prince was officially declared dead
Death in absentia
Death in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
in 1897. A photograph of a drowning victim from 1890 resembling Le Prince was discovered in 2003 during research in the Paris police archives.
Late recognition
Even though Le Prince's solo achievement is unchallenged, except for proponents of William Friese-GreeneWilliam Friese-Greene
William Friese-Greene was a British portrait photographer and prolific inventor. He is principally known as a pioneer in the field of motion pictures and is credited by some as the inventor of cinematography.-Career:William Edward Green was born on 7 September 1855, in Bristol...
, his work has been long forgotten since he disappeared on the eve of the first public demonstration of the result of years of toil in his Leeds workshop and test conducted at the New York Institute for the Deaf. His pursuit of trademarks over in the United States, the dominance and influence of his countryman rival Thomas Edison, founder of the oligopolistic
Oligopoly
An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers . The word is derived, by analogy with "monopoly", from the Greek ὀλίγοι "few" + πόλειν "to sell". Because there are few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others...
Edison Trust, became unstoppable.
For the April 1894 commercial exploitation of his personal kinetoscope
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic...
Parlor, Thomas Edison is credited as the inventor of cinema
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
in the USA, while in France, the Lumière Brothers, are coined inventors of the Cinématographe
Cinematographe
A cinematograph is a film camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. It was invented in the 1890s.Note that this was not the first 'moving picture' device. Louis Le Prince had built early devices in 1886. His 1888 film Roundhay Garden Scene still survives.There is much dispute as...
device and inventor of cinema for the first, collective, commercial exploitation of motion picture films in Paris. Like Le Prince, another untold proto-cinema figure is the French inventor, Léon Bouly
Léon Bouly
Léon Guillaume Bouly was a French inventor who created the word cinematograph.-Cinematograph:After devising chronophotography devices, Bouly applied a patent on a reversible device of photography and optics for the analysis and synthesis of motions, calling it the Cynématographe Léon Bouly on...
, who created the first "Cinématographe" device and patented it in 1892 (Patent N°219,350). He was never credited, and two years later his left unpaid patent was bought by the Lumière Brothers (Patent N°245,032).
However, at Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the UK, Le Prince is celebrated as a local hero. On 12 December 1930, the Lord Mayor of Leeds unveiled a bronze memorial tablet at 160 Woodhouse Lane (then Auto Express Engineering Company), Le Prince's workshop. In 2003, the University
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
's "Centre for Cinema, Photography and Television" was named in his honour. Le Prince's workshop in Woodhouse Lane was until recently the site of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in Leeds. The former Blenheim Baptist chapel, at the junction of Woodhouse Lane and Blackman Lane, is next to the site. (coordinates: 53°48′20.58"N 1°32′56.74"W)
In France, an appreciation society was created as "Association des Amis de Le Prince" ("Association of LePrince's friends") which still exists in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
.
In 1992, the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii
Mamoru Oshii
Mamoru Oshii is a Japanese filmmaker, television director, and writer. Famous for his philosophy-oriented storytelling, Oshii has directed a number of popular anime, including Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, Ghost in the Shell, and Patlabor 2...
(Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell (film)
"See You Everyday" is different from the rest of the soundtrack, being a pop song sung in Cantonese by Fang Ka Wing. It can be faintly heard playing in the marketplace scene, when Batou is hunting the ghost-hacked puppet....
) directed Talking Head
Talking Head (film)
is a 1992 live action film written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. Its a surreal meta-film mystery involving the production of an anime called Talking Head....
an avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
feature film paying tribute to the cinematography history's tragic ending figures such as George Eastman
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream...
, Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
and Louis Le Prince who is credited as "the true inventor of eiga", Japanese for "motion picture film".
LePrince Cine Camera-Projector types
| Model | Specs | Design | Manufacture | Patents |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 LPCC Type-16 |
Patent: "Method of, and apparatus for, producing animated pictures." Designation: LePrince 16-lens camera, designated by him as "receiver" Framerate: 16 frame/s Film: Eastman Kodak paper film 1885 |
1886, New York | Made in Paris, 1887 | US Patent No.376,247/217,809 Issued  Washington 2 November 1886 Accepted 10 January 1888 |
| LPCCP Type-1 MkI | Patent: "Method and Apparatus for the projection of Animated Pictures in view of the adaptation to Operatic Scenes" Designation: LePrince single-lens camera MkI, designated by him as "receiver" Framerate: 10~12 frame/s |
1886, New York | Made in Leeds, 1887 | UK Patents No.423/425 Issued Washington 2 November 1886 Rejected 10 January 1888 Issued London 10 January 1888 Accepted 16 November 1888 Issued  Paris 11 January 1888 Accepted June, 1890 |
 LPCCP Type-1 MkII |
Patent: "Method and Apparatus for the projection of Animated Pictures in view of the adaptation to Operatic Scenes" Designation: LePrince single-lens camera MkII, designated by him as "receiver" Framerate: 20 frame/s (adjustable) Lenses: Viewfinder (upper) & Photograph (lower) Film: sensitised paper film & gelatin stripping film (2+1/2 in Focus: lever (backward/forward) |
1888 | *Frederic Mason (chassis) *James W. Langley (metal parts) Made in Leeds, 1888 |
FR Patent No.188,089 Issued London 10 January 1888 Accepted 16 November 1888 Issued Paris 11 January 1888 Accepted June, 1890 |
| LPP Type-3 | 3-lens projector, designated by him as "deliverer" |
Remaining material & production
These world's first motion picture films do not exist anymore, as Le Prince's body and effects disappeared two years later, but parts of the original paper film strips remaining in the camera (Mark II) were found and exploited later.
Half a century later, Le Prince's widow gave the remaining apparatus to the National Science Museum
Science Museum (London)
The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(it's now in the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT), Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, which opened in 1983 and in 2006 was renamed the National Media Museum). In May 1931, photographic plates were produced by workers of the Science Museum from paper print copies provided by Marie Le Prince. In 1999, the copies were restored, remastered and re-animated to produce a digital version which was uploaded on to the NMPFT website as public resources ("Roundhay" & "Leeds"). These versions are running at the modern cinématographe
Cinematographe
A cinematograph is a film camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. It was invented in the 1890s.Note that this was not the first 'moving picture' device. Louis Le Prince had built early devices in 1886. His 1888 film Roundhay Garden Scene still survives.There is much dispute as...
24 frames per second (frame/s
Frame rate
Frame rate is the frequency at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems...
) rate (Roundhay Garden at 24.64 frame/s and Leeds Bridge at 23.50frame/s), but Le Prince used the frame-rate adjust device built into his apparatus to test various speeds. According to Adolphe Le Prince, who assisted his father at Leeds, Roundhay Garden is believed to have been shot at 12 frame/s and Leeds Bridge at 20 frame/s.
Since the NMPFT release, various names are used to designate the untitled films, such as "Leeds Bridge" or "Roundhay Garden Scene". Actually, all current online versions (e. g., GIF
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
, FLV
FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–11. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different video file formats known as Flash Video: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files...
, SWF
SWF
SWF is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function.,...
, OGG
Ogg
Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...
, WMV, etc.) are derived from the NMPFT files, and these tentative titles are not canon to Le Prince whose mother tongue was French. However, "Leeds Bridge" is believed to be the original title, as the traffic sequence was referred as such by Frederic Mason, Le Prince's mechanic.
Man Walking Around A Corner (LPCC Type-16)
The last remaining production of Le Prince's 16-lens camera is a frame sequence of a man walking around a corner. It is believed to have been shot with the 16-lens type but this is unsure as it appears as if it has been made with a single glass plate not an Eastman American film.An amateur remastering of all 16 frames is on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
here. The individual frames used are on Flickr here.
Roundhay Garden Scene (LPCCP Type-1 MkII)
The 1931 National Science Museum copy of the remaining film sequence shot in Roundhay garden features 20 frames (run time 1.66 seconds at 12 frame/s). The digital version produced by the NMPFT has 52 frames (run time 2.11 seconds at 24.64 frame/s) and switches the left side and the right side, since the house is actually incorrectly shown on the right-hand side of the scene in the 1931 copy. It is believed to have been mirrored because of paper parts stuck on the left side of the film that would reduce the visibility. The reason is both physiologic and cultural, a Western viewer's eyes are used to automatically watch from top left to right, this reflex action comes from the childhood taught reading direction. The garden sequence film's damaged side results in distortion and deformation on the inverted, right side of the digital movie. The scene was shot in Le Prince's father-in-law's garden at Oakwood Grange, Roundhay on October 14, 1888.Leeds Bridge (LPCCP Type-1 MkII)
Louis Le Prince filmed traffic on Leeds Bridge from Hicks the Ironmongers at these coordinates: 53°47′37.70"N 1°32′29.18"W.The earliest frames copy belongs to the 1923 NMPFT inventory (frames 118-120 & 122-124), though a larger sequence comes from the 1931 inventory (frames 110-129). Digital footage produced by the NMPFT has 65 frames (run time 2.76 seconds at 23.50 frame/s) although the original Leeds Bridge film of 20 frames was shot by Le Prince's camera at 20 frame/s on a 60 mm film, according to Adolphe Le Prince who assisted his father when this film was shot in late October 1888.
Accordion Player (LPCCP Type-1 MkII)
The last remaining film of Le Prince's single-lens camera is a sequence of frames of Adolphe Le Prince playing a diatonic button accordionDiatonic button accordion
A diatonic button accordion or melodeon is a type of button accordion where the melody-side keyboard is limited to the notes of diatonic scales in a small number of keys...
. It was recorded on the steps of the house of Joseph Whitley, Adolphe's grandfather. The recording date is probably 1888. The NMPFT has not remastered this film. An amateur remastering of the first 17 frames is on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
here.
Sources
- Insight Collections & Research Centre
- Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats
- Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
- The Career of Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince by E. Kilburn Scott (July 1931)
- La naissance du cinéma : cent sept ans et un crime... by Irénée Dembowski (in Kino 1989, translated from Polish to French in Cahiers de l'AFIS, numero 182, nov.-déc. by Michel Rouzé, quoted by Alliage numéro 22 1995)
- The Missing Reel, by Christopher Rawlence (Athenum Publishers, New York, 1990)
- Le Prince's Early Film Cameras, by Simon Popple (in Photographica World, September 1993)
- Le Prince and the Lumières, by Rod Varley (in Making of the Modern World, Science Museum, UK, 1992)
- Career of Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince, by E. Kilburn Scott, (in Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, USA, July 1931)
- Burns, Paul The History of the Discovery of Cinematography An Illustrated Chronology
- The Pioneer Work of Le Prince in Kinematography, by E. Kilburn Scott (in The Photographic Journal #63, August 1923, p. 373~8)
- Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince by Merritt Crawford (in Cinema, 1 Dec., 1930, p. 28~31)
- L'affaire Lumière. Du mythe à l'histoire, enquête sur les origines du cinéma by Léo Sauvage, 1985 ISBN 2-86244-045-0
- Ingenious Le Prince 16-lens camera
- Louis Le Prince: the body of evidence by Richard Howells (in Screen vol.47 #2, Oxford University Press, 2006)
- Le Prince, inventeur et artiste, précurseur du cinéma by Jean-Jacques Aulas and Jacques Pfend (in Revue d'Histoire du Cinéma N°32, December 2000, p. 9) ISSN 0769-0959
- New research centre honours father of film
- Essential Films chapter 2, Culture Wars by Ion Martea
- Roundhay Garden Scene (1888), Culture Wars by Ion Martea
- Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888), Culture Wars by Ion Martea
- The Indispensable Murder Book, edited by Joseph Henry Jackson (New York: The Book Sociey, 1951), p. 437-464, "The Red and White Girdle" by Christopher Morley. This deals with the murder of Gouffe, and shows the intense study of that trunk murder in 1889-90.
- Pfend Jacques: Louis Aimé Augustin Leprince,pioneer of the moving picture,and his family.(Sarreguemines,2009).
External links
- Adventures In Cybersound - extended biography by Dr Russell Naughton, RMIT University, Melbourne. Retrieved 2008-09-26
- Roundhay Garden Scene YouTube Video
- Leeds Bridge YouTube Video
- Accordion Player by Louis Le Prince a rough YouTube video from the first 17 frames
- Louis Le Prince Centre for Cinema, Photography, and Television. University of Leeds. Retrieved 2008-09-26
- The Legend of Louis Le Prince
- Leodis - a photographic archive of Leeds. Leeds Library & Information Service. Allows search for key terms such as Louis Le Prince or Leeds Bridge or Bridge End or Hick Brothers or Auto Express (workshop site), etc.
- National Science Museum, London
- National Media Museum, Bradford
- Armley Mills-Leeds Industrial Museum
- Le Prince single-lens camera 1888, Science & Society Picture Library
- Chronomedia year 1888 (Terramedia)
- Burns, Paul The History of the Discovery of Cinematography 1885~1889 An Illustrated Chronological History
- Local films for local people (BBC Bradford & West Yorkshire)