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Transcript

Who doesn’t love a good Hollywood story?  In the 1930s and '40s, there was a vogue for biopics about scientists and inventors:  Don Ameche played Alexander Graham Bell, Paul Muni won an Oscar for playing Louis Pasteur, Greer Garson was Marie Curie, even Edward G. Robinson got into the act as the Nobel-winning immunologist Dr. Paul Ehrlich, and Spencer Tracy starred in 1940 in Edison, the Man, diligent workers all, long hours over many years, many obstacles and setbacks, only to win through in the final reel to success and notoriety forever as the score swells over the closing credits.  Stirring stuff.

While this isn’t a story about Hollywood, it’s among the first stories about motion pictures – the origin story, if you will – how it all got started and while there are no spoilers here, I can tell you that it does indeed have a classic Hollywood ending – though maybe not quite the one you know or expect.

A document that changed the world: Patent #423, granted to Louis Le Prince by the British Patent Office, 1888

I’m Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School, and I’m joined here by my student Elianna Thayne, who researched, wrote and produced this episode.

Picture a mahogany box with applewood feet and brass fittings, weighing in at some forty pounds; something you might mistake for an odd side table, if it wasn’t for two lenses peeking out at the front and a reel of film in the back, set on two spools to capture passing images held for exposure behind a brass plate, which is your main indication that this is the first motion picture camera. On the fourteenth of October, 1888, this camera recorded the very first known film in the Roundhay suburb of Leeds, England, featuring the inventor’s son, in-laws, and good friend walking around a garden. The surviving frames – now available on YouTube, of course, constitute a two-second film that stands today as proof that, yes, Louis Le Prince, is indeed the original inventor of the motion picture camera.  To which you are likely now saying, “What, who?”

In late 1886, Le Prince files a patent application, US #376,247, titled “Method of and apparatus for producing animated pictures of natural scenery and life”, for a 16-lens system meant, as many early attempts at motion pictures did, to capture photographs in rapid sequence. It also marked the end of his time in New York, where he’d been living with his wife and children; shortly after, Le Prince moved to Leeds – where he’d be closer to benefactors – and on January 10^th, 1888, he would submit another patent application,  this one in Britain, #423, which claimed: “Improvement in the method of and apparatus for producing animated photographic pictures and that he is the true and first inventor thereof”. This patent was actually written for the 16-lens camera and projection system – but right before he sent it off to the British Patent Office, Le Prince tacked on a provision for his newly-developed single-lense camera and projection system. 

The distinction between a 16- and single-lense system gets to the heart of the definition of “film”: Film, as we all know, isn’t just a bunch of pictures taken really fast, it’s a continuous recording from a single point of view, a feat Le Prince achieved after many years of experimentation at his workshop in Leeds. 

It’s likely that this interest in cinematography actually began in his childhood; his father was good friends with Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the Daguerreotype, who taught Le Prince about chemistry, art, and photography at his studio. By the time he began submitting patents for his own inventions, Le Prince had completely dedicated his life to discovering the mechanisms that could record and reproduce moving life. 

The British patent office accepted Le Prince’s application on the 16th of November, 1888, a month after Edison began work on his own motion-picture device, and, coincidentally we hope, a week after the last of what’s known as the “canonical five” murders of Jack the Ripper. Depositions given to the US consulate, concerning Le Prince’s American patent application, further corroborated his inventorship. James Longley, a mechanic who assisted Le Prince in his workshop, told the consul he’d constructed “an improved camera of one lens for taking Photographs at a great number per minute. I also partly made the delivering machine for throwing the Pictures at the Same rate as taken in the Camera, onto a large white Screen”. Engineer John William Vine confirmed he’d seen this projection device in action in 1889. A friend named Henry Woolf claimed he’d witnessed “exhibited on a screen a moving figure of a man, which gave the impression of life-like movement” back in 1886. Patent secured, Le Prince was ready to share his invention with the world. His wife, Lizzie, organized a public film showing back in Manhattan. On September 16th, 1890, Le Prince said goodbye to his brother before boarding a train from Dijon to Paris, his second-to-last stop before setting off for New York. He was never seen again. 

Le Prince’s disappearance baffles still today. Despite the efforts of his friends and family, no evidence has ever been found to indicate whatever fate befell him: no eyewitnesses (despite the fact that he was a striking 6’4” with a distinctive mustache), no body, no deathbed confessions. Sensational theories abound, of course, though none hold water. However, here’s something tangible to chew on: Thomas Edison submitted a “caveat” to the US patent office for a motion-picture camera undeniably similar to Le Prince’s single-lens, mere weeks after he, dare we say, “cinematically” vanished off the face of the earth. 

Edison was infamous for his use of caveats to keep his foot in the door of multiple evolving industries. Here’s how it worked: he would file a caveat with a vague description of some new groundbreaking technology. When competitors sent in their full patent applications for the same, or similar, inventions, the patent office would notify Edison, giving him three months to submit his patent application. When he did so, the caveat would establish precedence, and Edison would be declared the original inventor. If that sounds like cheating to you, you’d be right – the United States outlawed the caveat in 1910 under the very same logic. 

The most damning part? Edison’s previous designs hadn’t even been close to the mechanism that powered Le Prince’s single-lens. In 1888, when he assigned the work of inventing a motion-picture device to his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, Edison insisted that a glass cylinder be used as the photographic base for the camera, and that a peephole device be implemented for viewing. By the time his motion-picture “invention” was announced to the public, however, the camera – coined the “Kinetograph” – utilized not a glass cylinder but a roll of celluloid film, and instead of a peephole device he’d created the “Kinetoscope”, a projector. Remember Henry Woolf? When he saw that announcement in The Sun, he reached out to Lizze Le Prince, outraged: this was “an infringement on Le Prince’s machine,” he declared. The United States patent office agreed. They rejected Edison’s first two attempts to patent the Kinetograph, stating: “The claims are anticipated by patents to Le Prince 376247, Jan. 10, 1888”. 

Even when the patent was finally accepted in 1893, the fight wasn’t over. William Dickson, the assistant who developed the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope – and unsurprisingly got none of the credit – left Edison’s employment and founded the American Mutoscope Company, a competing enterprise. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well. Before long the rival companies were engaged in a bitter court case: Equity 6928: Thomas A. Edison vs American Mutoscope Company, with the intention of determining whether “Thomas A. Edison was the original, first and sole inventor or discoverer” of cinematography. 

In 1898, a year after Le Prince was legally declared dead, his family became involved in the case. His son Adolphe – who’d featured in the Roundhay Garden Scene as a child – jumped on the opportunity to bring a public spotlight to his father’s inceptive inventorship. The Le Prince family had been trying to advocate on behalf of Louis since his disappearance, but in the mandatory waiting period following his disappearance before he could be declared deceased, they couldn’t take legal action against Edison, nor did they possess the financial or technical abilities to publicise his films. By the time they could take legal management of Le Prince’s patents, Edison and other film pioneers had already dominated the emerging cinema industry. When Adolfe arrived in court, he brought with him his father’s cameras as physical proof and further testimony to support the record of antecedency. Perhaps the most timeline-affirming piece of evidence was the Roundhay Garden Scene, confirmed as predating Edison’s caveat by two years because it featured Le Prince’s sister in-law – who died a matter of days after she was filmed. American Mutoscope, however, walked a fine line. They only wanted to disprove Edison’s claim to originality; if they were to prove Le Prince’s inventorship, they would have to pay his family royalties.

The first motion-picture camera sat just outside the doors of the courtroom as American Mutoscope’s lawyers cunningly manipulated Adolfe’s testimony to their own ends. The case did not end in the reestablishment of Le Prince’s primacy. The resolution, reached in 1901, declared Edison the first and sole inventor of motion picture camera. A court of appeals overturned that ruling in 1902, but Adolphe didn’t live to see it. Regardless, the overturning did nothing to rescue the acclaim his father deserved, nor did it halt Edison’s supremacy over cinematography. Patents, as the Le Prince family tragically discovered, do not decide inventorship, contra their purpose. Even the courts that handle patenting disputes cannot rule on legacy – only those with the influence to sway the court of public opinion can do that. The names we remember today are cemented by foundations of publicity, not patent files gathering dust on the shelves of history. Yet, the people of Leeds, where Le Prince’s workshop once flickered with the future of film, never forgot him. In 1930, the Lord Mayor erected a bronze memorial plate in his honor. It reads: “Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince had a workshop on this site where he made a one-lens camera and with it photographed animated pictures. He also made a projecting machine and this initiated the art of kinemetography.” 

Doesn’t this feel like a movie?  The inventor going missing, the dead sister-in-law, the courtroom battle with the camera just outside the door, powerful forces depriving the plucky true creator of his due, even Jack the Ripper as a cameo, all very appropriately cinematic; it’d be a great part for Bradley Cooper, Greta Gerwig could direct.  In reality, this isn’t a story about one document, it’s 2, no wait, 3 – hang on, 4: the camera, the patent, the first film, and the caveat, which eventually won through.  And there’s your Hollywood ending:  not the vindication of the hero, but rather the triumph of money and power – and name recognition – winning through as it so often seems to do.

References

“Blog | Life, Mystery and Legacy of Louis Le Prince.” n.d. Accessed July 21, 2025. .

Casey, Kieron. 2013. “The Mystery of Louis Le Prince | National Science and Media Museum.” National Science and Media Museum Blog, August 29. .

Greenblatt, Leah. 2022. “He Created the First Known Movie. Then He Vanished.” Books. The New York Times, April 14. .

Howells, Richard. 2006. “Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence.” Screen 47 (2): 179–200. .