Louis Le Prince, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Louis Le Prince

Cinema pioneer

Date of Birth: 28-Aug-1841

Place of Birth: Metz, Grand Est, France

Date of Death: 16-Sep-1890

Profession: inventor, cinematographer, film director

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Virgo


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About Louis Le Prince

  • Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (French: [lwi l? p??~s]; 28 August 1841 – vanished 16 September 1890) was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion picture camera, possibly being the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of (paper) film.
  • Although some have credited him as the "Father of Cinematography", his work did not influence the commercial development of cinema—owing at least in part to the great secrecy surrounding it. A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince's motion-picture experiments culminated in 1888 in the city of Leeds, England.
  • In October of that year, he filmed moving-picture sequences of Roundhay Garden, Leeds Bridge, and his brother playing the accordion, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film.
  • This work may have been slightly in advance of the inventions of contemporaneous moving-picture pioneers such as William Friese-Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, and 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 in the US because he mysteriously vanished; he was last known to be boarding a train on 16 September 1890.
  • The reason for his disappearance is not known and his family and supporters invented a series of conspiracy theories, including: a murder set up by Edison, secret homosexuality, intentional disappearing in order to start a new life, and a murder by his brother over their mother's will.
  • No evidence exists for any of these and the most likely explanation remains that he committed suicide, overcome by the shame of heavy debts and the failure of his experiments.
  • In 2004, a French police archive was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man bearing a strong resemblance to Le Prince who was discovered in the Seine in Paris just after the time of his disappearance.At the start of 1890, the 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.
  • But Le Prince's widow and son, Adolphe, were keen to advance Louis' 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 Le Prince was involved in the case but was not allowed to present his father's two cameras as evidence and eventually the court ruled in favour of Edison.
  • However, a year later that ruling was overturned.
  • Edison then reissued his patents and succeeded in controlling the US film industry for many years.

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