Louis Le Prince

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Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince

Louis Le Prince, inventor of motion picture film
Born August 28, 1842(1842-08-28)
Metz, France
Occupation Chemist, engineer, inventor, filmmaker
Spouse Elizabeth Le Prince-Whitley

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (28 August 1842, vanished 16 September 1890) was an inventor who is generally recognized as the first person to record motion images on film.[1]

In October 1888, Le Prince filmed Roundhay Garden Scene, which is thought to be the world's first successful attempt to record moving images, and hence the very first motion picture film.[2] He followed this with a film of a Leeds Bridge street scene. These were several years before the work of competing inventors such as Thomas Edison and Auguste and Louis Lumière.

Le Prince was a Frenchman who divided his adult life among France, Britain and the United States. His ground-breaking work in 1888 was conducted in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

He was never able to perform a planned public demonstration in the United States because he mysteriously vanished from a train in September 16 1890.[1] 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 be him.

Contents

[edit] 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-patent 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 Edison applied for one.

60mm film spools used by Le Prince on his 1888 single-lens camera-projector MkII (1930 Science Museum, London)
60mm film spools used by Le Prince on his 1888 single-lens camera-projector MkII (1930 Science Museum, London)

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.

[edit] Life

“ "In conclusion, I would say that Mr. Le Prince was in many ways a very extraordinary man, apart from his inventive genius, which was undoubtedly great. He stood 6ft. 3in. or 4in. (190cm) in his stockings, well built in proportion, and he was most gentle and considerate and, though an inventor, of an extremely placid disposition which nothing appeared to ruffle."Declaration of Frederic Mason (wood-worker and assistant of Le Prince, April 21, 1931, American consulate of Bradford, England) ”

[edit] Childhood and school

Le Prince was born in the fortress[citation needed] at Metz, France, on 28 August 1842.[1][3] His father was a major of artillery in the French Army[4] 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,[4] from whom the young Le Prince received lessons relating to photography and chemistry[citation needed] and for whom he was the subject of a Daguerrotype,[citation needed] an early type of photograph. His education went on to include the study of painting in Paris and post-graduate chemistry at Leipzig University,[4] which provided him with the academic knowledge he was to utilise in the future.

[edit] Adulthood

He moved to Leeds, West Yorkshire, England in 1866, after being invited to join John Whitley,[1] a friend from college, in Whitley Partners of Hunslet,[5] a firm of brass founders making valves and components. In 1869 he married Elizabeth Whitley, John's sister[1] 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.[citation needed]

In 1881 Le Prince went to the United States[4] as an agent for Whitley Partners, staying in the country along with his family once his contract had ended.[citation needed] 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 DC and Chicago.[4][5] 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 United States, Le Prince built a camera that utilised sixteen lenses[5] 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[5], Le Prince built and then patented, a one lens camera. It was first used[citation needed] 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 trams 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,[1] a blue plaque marks the spot). These pictures were soon projected on a screen in Leeds, making it the first motion picture exhibition.

[edit] Suspicious disappearance

In September 1890, Le Prince boarded a train on a Friday, promising friends he would rejoin them in Paris on the following Monday for the return journey to England, to be followed by a trip to the US to promote his new camera. However, Le Prince did not arrive at the appointed time and he was never seen again by his family or friends. All that could be established about his last whereabouts was that he was seen on on 16 September 1890 boarding the 2:42 train at Dijon for his return to Paris.[1]

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. However, five main theories have been proposed.

  1. Missing person (1890):
    No luggage, nor corpse was found in the Dijon-Paris express nor along the railway. No one saw Le Prince at the Dijon station on September 16, 1890, except his brother. No one saw Le Prince in the Dijon-Paris express after he was seen boarding it. No one noticed strange behavior, nor aggression in the Dijon-Paris express. The French police report conclusion: a missing person. ([4])
  2. Perfect suicide (1890):
    According to a police report, Louis Le Prince wanted to commit suicide because he was on the verge of bankruptcy. Le Prince had already set his suicide and he managed for his own body and belongings to never be found. This theory was reported in 1928, by Georges Potoniée, quoting the son of the architect in Les Origines Du Cinématographe. ([5])
  3. Patent Wars assassination, "Equity 6928" (1900):
    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 Missing Reel. At the time that he vanished, Le Prince was about to patent his 1889 projector in England 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,[clarify] 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. Suicide was presumed. [6]
  4. Disappearance ordered by the family (1966):
    In 1966, Jacques Deslandes proposed a theory in Histoire comparée du cinéma: "Le Prince's disappearance was voluntary and was caused by reasons of financial order and familial conveniences". [7] In his 1985 L'affaire Lumière: Du mythe à l'histoire, enquête sur les origines du cinéma ("Lumière affair: From myth to History, report on the origins of cinema"), journalist Léo Sauvage quotes a note from Pierre Gras, director of the Dijon municipal library, "Le Prince is dead in Chicago in 1898, voluntary disappearance at the family's request. Homosexuality." This statement was made by a famous historian visiting the Dijon library, but kept secret. Gras showed this note to Sauvage in 1977.[8]
  5. Fratricide, murder for money (1967):
    In 1967, Jean Mitry proposed, in Histoire du cinéma, a murder for money theory. Since the architect was sure his brother wanted to commit suicide, why didn't he try to stop him, and why didn't he report this to the police before it was too late?[9]

A photograph of a drowning victim from 1890 resembling Le Prince was discovered in 2003 during research in the Paris police archives.[4]

[edit] Career

[edit] Decisive meetings

[edit] Late recognition

“ "Le Prince had indeed succeeded making pictures move at least seven years before the Lumière brothers and Thomas Edison, and so suggests a re-writing of the history of early cinema." Richard Howells (Screen vol.47 #2, p.179~200, Oxford University Press, 2006) ”

Even though Le Prince's solo achievement is unchallenged, except for proponents of William Friese-Greene, 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 United States, 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, England, Le Prince is celebrated as a local hero. On December 12, 1930, the Lord Mayor of Leeds unveiled a bronze memorial tablet on #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 till 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 Japanese 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, George Méliès and Louis Le Prince who is credited as "the true inventor of eiga", Japanese for "motion picture film".

[edit] LePrince Cine Camera-Projector types

Model Specs Design Manufacture Patents
Courtesy of the "National Museum of Photography, Film & Television", Bradford
LPCC Type-16		 Patent: "Method of, and apparatus for,
producing animated pictures."
Designation: LePrince 16-lens camera, designated by him as "receiver"
Framerate: 16frame/s
Film: Eastman Kodak paper film 1885		 1886, New York Made in Paris, 1887 US Patent No.376,247/217,809
Issued
Flag of the United States
Washington
November 2, 1886
Accepted
January 10, 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: 10~12frame/s		 1886, New York Made in Leeds, 1887 UK Patents
No.423/425
Issued
Flag of the United States
Washington
November 2, 1886
Rejected
January 10, 1888
Issued
Flag of the United Kingdom
London
January 10, 1888
Accepted
November 16, 1888
Issued
Flag of France
Paris
January 11, 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: 20frame/s (adjustable)
Lenses: Viewfinder (upper) & Photograph (lower)
Film: sensitised paper film & gelatin stripping film (2½"-60mm)
Focus: lever (backward/forward)		 1888 *Frederic Mason
(chassis)
*James W. Langley (metal parts)
Made in Leeds, 1888		 FR Patent No.188,089
Issued
Flag of the United Kingdom
London
January 10, 1888
Accepted
November 16, 1888
Issued
Flag of France
Paris
January 11, 1888
Accepted
June, 1890
LPP Type-3 3-lens projector, designated by him as "deliverer"

[edit] Le Prince's legacy

[edit] Remaining material & production

Back view of Le Prince's single-lens Cine Camera-Projector MkII opened (Science Museum, London, 1930).
Back view of Le Prince's single-lens Cine Camera-Projector MkII opened (Science Museum, London, 1930).

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 and Le Prince disappeared body and effects 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 October 1930, photographic copies of these original fragments were produced by workers of the Science Museum. In the 2000s, the copies weres 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 24.64frame/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 Alphonse Le Prince[clarify] who assisted his father at Leeds, Roundhay Garden is believed to have been shot at 12frame/s and Leeds Bridge at 20frame/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.

[edit] Man Walking Around A Corner (LPCC Type-16)

Unremastered film, original frames copy (14 frames) by National Science Museum, London circa 1930. (Courtesy NMPFT, Bradford) NMPFT

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.

[edit] Roundhay Garden Scene (LPCCP Type-1 MkII)

Main article: Roundhay Garden Scene

Roundhay, 1888 original frames copy (20 frames) by National Science Museum, London 1930 (Courtesy of NMPFT, Bradford).

Roundhay, remastered version (52 frames) by NMPFT, Bradford 2000's.

The 1930 National Science Museum copy of the remaining film sequence shot in Roundhay garden features 20 frames (run time 1.66 seconds at 12frame/s). The digital version produced by the NMPFT has 52 frames (run time 2.11 seconds at 24.64frame/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 1930 copy. It is believed to had 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.

[edit] Leeds Bridge (LPCCP Type-1 MkII)

Louis le Prince filmed traffic on Leeds Bridge from Hicks the Ironmongers[1] at these coordinates: 53°47′37.70″N, 1°32′29.18″W.[6]

6-frame sequence (118~124) of Leeds Bridge (National Science Museum, London 1923)

20-frame sequence of Leeds Bridge (National Science Museum)(Courtesy NMPFT, Bradford)

Leeds, remastered version (65 frames) by NMPFT, Bradford 2000's.

The earliest frames copy belongs to the 1923 NMPFT inventory, though a different sequence is coming from the 1931 inventory. Digital footage produced by the NMPFT has 65 frames (run time 2.76 seconds at 23.50frame/s) although the original Leeds Bridge film of 20 frames was shot by Le Prince's camera at 20frame/s on a 60 mm film according to Alphonse Le Prince who assisted his father when this film was shot in late October 1888. The Leeds Bridge film found in the single-lens camera (MkII) actually contains three scenes, first the Rounday Garden scene at Oakwood Grange (20 frames), then the Leeds Bridge traffic scene (20 frames) and lastly a sequence of an accordion player (19 frames plus a damaged 20th) which has not yet been restored nor remastered by the NMPFT. The third sequence suffers from the same problem as the garden sequence.

[edit] Accordion Player (LPCCP Type-1 MkII)

Unremastered film, 1888 original frames copy (20 frames, 41~59) by National Science Museum, London 1930 (Courtesy of NMPFT, Bradford).

The last remaining film of Le Prince's single-lens camera is a sequence of frames of an accordion player. The location of its recording is uncertain; it could be Leeds or Paris. The recording date is probably 1888. The NMPFT has not remastered this film, probably because of its uncertain recording time and location. An amateur remastering of the first 17 frames is on YouTube here.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h BBC Education - Local Heroes Le Prince Biography, BBC, archived on 1999-11-28
  2. ^ National Museum of Photography, Film & Television
  3. ^ 1842 is given by these sources: [1] [2] [3]
  4. ^ a b c d e f Herbert, Stephen. Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince. Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. Retrieved on 2006-08-26.
  5. ^ a b c d Adventures in CyberSound: Le Prince, Louis Aimé Augustin, Dr Russell Naughton (using source: Michael Harvey , NMPFT Pioneers of Early Cinema : 1. Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince)
  6. ^ Google Earth Community: First Moving Pictures

[edit] Sources

[edit] See also

[edit] External links