The Missing Reel: The Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of Moving PicturesFrench inventor Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince vanished while on a train journey from Dijon to Paris in 1890; before his disappearance--he was then presumed dead--he had been on the brink of going public with his one-lens camera and projector. British filmmaker Rawlence here cites evidence left by his widow in her memoirs that Thomas Edison was linked to Le Prince's death. This absorbing, technically and legally overloaded whodunit jumps back and forth between past and present, including suspenseful accounts of the author's research and interviews with Le Prince's descendants on several continents. Rawlence discusses the cut-throat politics of the infant film industry and shady U.S. Patent Office dealings, along with what he considers Edison's dubious business practices. No smoking gun is decisively uncovered, however, and readers are left to draw their own conclusions about Le Prince's fate. |
Contents
LongDistance Information | 3 |
Leeds 1930 | 12 |
Leeds 1889 | 19 |
Copyright | |
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Adolphe Adolphe's Aimée Albert AMC's apparatus arc lamp Augustin Le Prince Billy British patent brother celluloid Choate claim Company Dickson Dijon Dyer early Edison Edmonds Electric Exhibition experiments father Fernand film frame French garden gelatine Georgic Herman Casler industry intermittent mechanism intermittently invention inventor Jim Longley John Whitley Joseph Whitley Jumel Mansion kinetoscope later lawyers Le Prince's Leeds Bridge lens camera lenses letter litigation Lizzie Lizzie's Longley looked machine manufacture Marey Marie Mason mechanical Memoirs months Motion Picture movie moving pictures moving-picture camera multi-lens Mutoscope Muybridge Muybridge's panorama Paris patent application Patent Office Peet photographic Plate Prince family Prince papers Prince's disappearance Prince's patent projection projector Richard Wilson Roundhay seemed sequence Seward shutters single lens single-lens camera sixteen-lens camera stereoscopic thing Thomas Edison tion took train turned valve wanted West Orange Whitley Partners Whitley's Wizard workshop York zoopraxiscope