Did Edison Kill the Father of Cinema? [VIDEO]
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Far from the CGI monsters and explosive action shots of today, it's a simple film. Just four people traipsing around a garden for 2.11 seconds. It was shot in October 1888 by Louis Leprince. For years, he'd toiled and tinkered with the camera, hoping his invention would usher in a new era of art and cinematic engineering. And it did. So why isn't Leprince here?

a household name. In September 1890, Louis vanished while on his way to the first public demonstration of his camera in the United States. Consequently, many people now credit Thomas Edison with the invention of the motion picture camera. I mean, it makes sense. He was America's greatest inventor. He invented the light bulb. Why wouldn't he be responsible for the movie camera? But wait.

Edison didn't exactly invent either one. Don't get me wrong, Edison was a masterful inventor, but what he really excelled at was business and self-promotion. He improved upon others' designs, making them easier to mass produce and sell to a wider consumer base.

Plenty of people had created bulbs before Edison, but he and chemist Joseph Swan introduced the carbon filament bulb, which would burn longer than the copper filament bulbs. He also had a whole team of inventors at his lab in Menlo Park. Edison's motion picture camera, the kinetoscope, was largely developed by his employee, William Kennedy Dixon.

And he was a patent machine. He eventually held 1,093 patents over his career, often beating out his competitors. Edison would do almost anything to be first. But would he kill? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday at

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Hi there, Carter Roy here. If you're interested in true crime, especially unsolved murders, serial killers, and cold cases, you'll love my brand new show, Murder True Crime Stories. Each episode covers a notorious murder or murders with a special focus on those who were impacted the most. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why these stories need to be heard. You can listen to Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts.

In September 1890, Louis le Prince traveled to Dijon, France to see his brother Albert. There, in the beautiful French countryside, they went over some family business. Their mother had died more than three years prior, but there were still a few things in her will that needed to be ironed out between the two brothers. Louis stayed with Albert for a few days before beginning the next stage of his journey.

He'd stop in Paris to meet a few friends. Then together, they'd all ride to his workshop in Leeds to pick up his new invention. Louis' final destination was New York, where his motion picture camera would make its world debut. He carried with him nothing but a small suitcase, believed to contain his patents.

The train ride, by all accounts, was uneventful. There were no disturbances, no confrontations, nothing to suggest anything suspicious occurred. The train pulled into the busy Paris station and slowed to a stop. A few of Louis' friends had arrived to meet him there personally, eager to see their dear friend who'd been working himself to the bone. But as the passengers filtered off the train and onto the platform, they soon realized that Louis wasn't among them.

Multiple police agencies and even Louis' friends and family would launch exhaustive investigations into his disappearance. His body, his belongings, not a single trace of Louis Le Prince was ever found. The suddenness of his disappearance and the mysterious timeline have given way to all manner of rumors and speculation. Well, let's go back to Louis' life to find out how we got here.

Louis le Prince was born in 1841 to a French artillery captain. His father's close friend was famed photographer Louis Daguerre. As he grew up, Louis learned photography from Daguerre and became enamored with the medium. Being exposed to photography at such a young age kindled an interest in both creative arts and mechanical sciences.

Louis attended Leipzig University in Germany, where he studied optics and chemistry. In 1866, he visited his college friend Jack Whitley in Leeds, West Yorkshire. It was only meant to be a short stay, but it became permanent when Jack took over his family business and offered his friend a job.

Louis accepted the position of draftsman at Whitley Partners, which manufactured machines, valves, and pipes. Three years later, Louis married Jack's sister, Elizabeth Lizzie Whitley, who was a talented artist. After Whitley Partners ran into financial trouble, Louis quit the firm and Lizzie got her teaching certificate. Together, they opened their own university, the Leeds Technical School of Art.

Louis always wanted to innovate and push the boundaries of what was possible with technology, and the couple became known for their innovation in photography. They specialized in the unique art of fixing color photographs onto metal plates and pottery pieces. By 1881, the Le Princes had settled into a successful life,

Their school was thriving, they rubbed elbows in the highest social circles, and their fame had grown so large they'd been complimented by the Duke of Edinburgh and commissioned by the Prince of Wales. But that year also brought change. Jack Whitley invited Louis to the United States to sell a new product.

The business trip ended in failure, but Louis was so taken with America, he decided to move his wife and their children across the Atlantic. The family settled in New York City. Lizzie resumed her work as an art teacher, and Louis took up interior decorating and managed a group of artists who created panoramic paintings.

It was around this time that Louis first dreamt up the idea of an invention that could capture moments in real time. The late 19th century had brought life-changing inventions that were developed, patented, and commercialized at a rapid pace.

Inventors and their industrial companies rushed to be the first to patent transformative technologies in order to secure the incredible amount of wealth that came with the new creations. The advent of photography in the 1830s had opened people's eyes to a new form of visual art. In the decades that followed, artists and inventors experimented with the medium and pushed the boundaries of what was possible.

In 1872, photographer Edward Muybridge found himself caught in a strange disagreement over the mechanics of a horse's gallop. He'd been hired by Leland Stanford, a railroad magnate, rancher, and founder of Stanford University. He wanted to settle a debate he'd been having with other racehorse owners. Stanford believed a horse in motion could have, if only for a moment, all four legs raised off the ground.

His opponents thought it was impossible. At least one hoof was in contact with the ground at all times. At this time, a camera shutter's exposure time lasted about two seconds. Stanford asked Muybridge to devise a camera that would be able to take an instantaneous photograph.

Over the next six years, Muybridge experimented with the technology. He hit a small roadblock in the form of murder. He was tried and acquitted of the shooting death of his wife's lover. But in 1878, Muybridge achieved the impossible.

Along the racetrack, he set up 24 cameras. Each was hooked to an electrical apparatus that would trip the shutters as the horse galloped past. This allowed him to take 24 photographs nearly simultaneously, with an exposure time approaching a thousandth of a second. From there, he invented a device he named the zoopraxiscope,

The photographs are painted onto a glass disc, which is rotated and projected onto a wall, creating the illusion of motion. And in case you're wondering, Stanford was correct. A galloping horse can have all four legs raised off the ground. This cinematic breakthrough made Muybridge an instant celebrity.

The idea of a camera capable of creating moving images seemed just around the corner, and Louis was certain he'd be the one to invent it. But he wasn't the only one. Other inventors, such as Thomas Edison, had caught wind of Muybridge's accomplishment. And then the race was on. Who would be the first to develop a camera capable of recording life in real time?

In 1885, Louis set up a workshop at his wife's school and began experimenting. He was facing stiff competition. Edison had established wealth and the backing of large companies. But Louis had a different leg up: a degree in optics. He knew the human eye can individually perceive up to 12 images per second.

To fool the brain into perceiving images as motion, Louis' camera would need to take more than 12 images per second. He wanted to give himself some wiggle room, so in November 1886, he filed a patent for a camera that could have anywhere from 1 to 16 lenses. It could take months for the patent office to review his application. In the meantime, he continued to fine-tune his invention.

Louis' first attempt was a 16-lens camera. It was built into a large wooden frame. On its side were four rows of lenses that were connected to the camera in back. The bulky wooden contraption looked strange and whimsical, like something out of a Tim Burton film.

It took over a year for the patent to be granted, but by that time, Louis had realized the 16-lens camera wasn't working. He'd shifted his focus to a single-lens camera, which he thought was covered under the patent, but due to a minor error, it was left out. This would later prove catastrophic for Louis and his family. According to Paul Fisher, author of The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures,

It was around this time that Louis considered teaming up with Thomas Edison. He was competition, sure, but he had the power, influence, and resources Louis thought would help get his project off the ground. Lizzie later alleged her husband set a meeting with Edison, but backed out after receiving a warning about the inventor from a friend. Shortly thereafter, Louis became more secretive about his work and

even going so far as to leave the country altogether. Louis and his son Adolph, who'd become his assistant, returned to Leeds to devote their time completely to building the camera. Lizzie and the rest of the children stayed behind in New York, but Louis frequently sent them letters and money. Louis lived with his in-laws and assembled a small team that included Adolph, a mechanic, and a woodworker.

Over the next two years, the group experimented and tinkered until finally, the single-lens camera was ready for action. On October 14th, 1888, Louis the Prince captured the world's first moving film. The Roundhay Garden scene, as it's now known, features Adolph, Lizzie's parents, and a family friend walking through the garden. It captured 12 frames per second.

But Louis wasn't done improving on the design. Around two weeks later, he hauled the camera out to Leeds Bridge. There, he filmed horse carts and pedestrians making their way across the bridge, this time reaching 20 frames per second. Louis couldn't wait to show off his work. He and his team created a rudimentary projection system and screened the Leeds Bridge footage for a small group of friends.

When Lizzie received word that her husband had achieved his goal, she made preparations for a public demonstration of Louis' footage in New York. Louis was ready for showtime, but running low on cash. That's when he remembered his brother Albert owed him part of their mother's inheritance.

She died three years prior, but Louis still hadn't received the 60,000 francs owed to him. Louis hoped to demonstrate his finished camera and projector across Europe and the United States, so he made that fateful detour to Dijon in September 1890 to collect his inheritance. But Albert wasn't going to give it up so easily.

Louis and Albert Le Prince's mother died in May 1887 and left her home in Paris to her two sons. But Louis wasn't really interested in the building. He had no desire to live in Paris, and besides, he had work to do. He'd been tinkering with the 16-lens camera while caring for his mother. A few months after she died, he took a series of photographs of a man just outside her home.

He felt even closer to perfecting the world's first motion picture camera, so he needed cash much more than he needed property. Albert, on the other hand, was in a tight spot. Tragically, his wife Gabrielle had died just a few months prior to their mom's death. She came from a wealthy family, but an arrangement made before their marriage meant Albert had little access to her riches in the event of her death.

He was now a widowed father to three children with almost nothing to his name. So the Le Prince brothers came to an agreement. Louis would sell his share of their mom's building to Albert for 60,000 francs, equivalent to about $830,000 in 2024. With a deadline of July 1st, 1892, Albert had five years to give Louis the cash.

But by the time Louis came to visit in September 1890, Albert hadn't given his brother any of the money. In his book, The Missing Real, Christopher Rawlence theorized Louis went to Dijon to collect his inheritance. Louis had debts of his own to pay and didn't want to turn up in New York empty-handed. According to Rawlence, that's exactly why Albert dodged his brother during the three-day visit.

Louis spent time with his nieces and nephews, fumed as Albert made excuse after excuse about being busy with work. On September 16th, the day Louis was set to leave, Albert and his children walked him from their home to the train station.

Earlier in the day, the Le Prince brothers had settled the inheritance business. On the train platform, Louis was in a good mood. When the train arrived, Louis embraced Albert and said goodbye to his nieces and nephews. Word traveled slowly in 1890, so it took over a month for anyone to realize Louis was missing.

When he didn't show up in Paris, his friends thought he may have gotten held up or taken a different train. When letters stopped arriving, Lizzie thought her husband was busy making final touches on his camera. By the time investigators learned of Louis' disappearance, there were very few witnesses. Memories had faded, so no one the police interviewed recalled seeing Louis on the train.

The only reason we believe Louis got on the train is because Albert said so. And suspiciously, he told Lizzie that Louis had taken the afternoon train, but his daughter wrote her uncle had departed in the morning. Was it a harmless mistake or intentional misdirect?

When Lizzie discovered Louis was missing, she wanted nothing more than to rush to France to aid in the search. But she was still in New York with three children and her sick father. The trip would cost too much money and time. Besides, this was an intercontinental missing persons investigation. Louis could be anywhere. He could even turn up in New York.

Albert insisted Lizzie stay in America and watch boats come into Ellis Island just in case Louis made it to his destination. From Britain, Lizzie's brother Jack Whitley reported Louis missing to Scotland Yard. Albert wrote a letter saying he'd opened a case with Detective Dugan of the Paris police. But again, that's just what Albert said. Years later, Lizzie traveled to Paris to speak with Detective Dugan

But she was told he'd retired from the police force before Louis had even gone missing. Albert also told Lizzie he'd taken out ads in local newspapers calling for information about Louis' whereabouts. But when author Paul Fisher searched newspaper archives for his book, The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, he couldn't find a single mention of Louis Le Prince.

Perhaps strangest of all is that when Albert communicated with Lizzie about the investigation, he never wrote to her directly. He always passed information through her brother Jack. So, the inheritance, the changing story, the fact that Albert was last to see Louie alive, it all certainly seems suspicious. But over the years, members of the Le Prince family have doubted the theory that Albert killed his brother.

By all accounts, the two had a loving relationship. And if inheritance was the motive, it didn't seem to help Albert much. He died in 1914 with only his mother's house to his name. But what if Louis wasn't killed at all? What if Louis simply wanted people to think he was dead? It sounds implausible when you consider that Louis seemed to be right on the verge of fame and fortune.

And yet, it's the theory that some experts and Louis' own great-nephew believe. In 1930, film historian Georges Potonier announced he'd uncovered evidence that at the time of his disappearance, Louis was on the brink of ruin and had taken all the necessary precautions not to be found.

Potonier didn't reveal the name of his source, but author Christopher Rawlins discovered in the margins of the historian's notes that the information came from one of Albert's grandsons. By 1890, Louis le Prince hadn't held a steady job in three years. He had been so focused on finishing his inventions, he turned down every job offer he got.

But building the world's first motion picture camera was a costly task, so Louis resorted to borrowing money. Earlier in the episode, we mentioned Louis had worked for Whitley Partners, the pipe manufacturing business managed by his brother-in-law Jack. Louis quit the job when the company ran into financial trouble, and he and Lizzie turned their attention toward the Leeds Technical School of Art.

But the financial trouble went a lot deeper than even Lizzie knew. For months, the bank had tried to collect outstanding debts from Whitley Partners. The problem grew so large that Jack was forced to resign, and his father Joseph came out of retirement to clean the place up. Louis himself had sunk money into the business, but with the scandal, he was unlikely to see any returns. To help with his fresh start, he borrowed 330 pounds.

Six years later, in November 1888, a law clerk served Louis a court summons. It was time to pay up. With interest, the debt had swelled to 600 pounds, or around 65,000 pounds in 2024.

Louis tried to pay the lender back, a pound here, a few shillings there, but by the time he was to debut his camera, he'd barely made a dent. Worse, Louis kept the extent of the debt a secret from his wife, but he had one final resort. The money Albert owed him from their mother's inheritance. This, some believe, is precisely why Louis went to see his brother in Dijon.

But Albert met Louis with resistance. So, rather than risk being seen as a failure, Louis simply got off the train during one of its stops before Paris and vanished. However, it costs money to restart your life. If his motivation to fake his own death was financial ruin, he wouldn't have the money to fund a new life at all. With a public demonstration of his motion picture camera imminent,

Louis felt he was sitting on a gold mine. With the success he was about to see, he could pay his debts a hundred times over. Albert's grandson also told Georges Potinier that rather than fake his death, Louis could have taken his own life. But if he had died by suicide, where was the body? In 2003, filmmakers digging into the Paris morgue archives thought they may have found the answer.

they discovered a photograph of an unidentified drowning victim from 1890. The photo shows a man with features similar to Louis le Prince. But other historians cast doubt on this theory. For one, the body didn't turn up in the morgue until three weeks after Louis' disappearance, and the body's decomposition didn't match that timeline.

The unidentified man also sported a full beard, while Louis preferred a mustache and mutton chops. And finally, if the unidentified body actually was Louis, the photograph can just as easily support the theory that he was murdered. His killers could have carried out their job and thrown his body from the train before arriving in Paris. Lizzie always believed there were what she called industrial spies after her husband's work.

Could another inventor have targeted him for his motion picture camera? Nine months after Louis vanished, Lizzie saw a headline in the New York Sun announcing Thomas Edison's newest device. When Lizzie saw it, she thought, that's my husband's invention.

In February 1888, Thomas Edison attended a lecture in Orange, New Jersey. The speaker was Edward Muybridge. After the success of his horse photos and zoopraxiscope, he embarked on a three-year lecture tour where he demonstrated the pioneering development in motion photography. Edison was impressed and invited Muybridge to visit his laboratory the next week.

When Muybridge came, he had a pitch: combine his zupraxiscope with Edison's phonograph to make a motion picture.

Edison would later deny this meeting took place, but something seems to have inspired him, because on October 17th, 1888, just three days after Louis Le Prince shot the Roundhay garden scene, Edison filed a caveat patent for an invention called the kinetoscope. He described it as a device that would do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear.

And by this time, Edison had become something of an expert in patent law. He often employed the caveat patent, which is a kind of pre-patent document announcing an intent to create a new invention. While actual patents underwent rigorous review, caveat patents were granted more readily without a comprehensive description. Caveats were valid for one year, but could be renewed annually for a fee.

It was the perfect setup for Edison to undercut his competitors before even starting to build a device. If someone else submitted an application for a similar apparatus, the patent office would notify the holder of the caveat and give them three months to file their full patent. If they got it done in time, the new applicant was automatically rejected.

Edison had the money to renew the caveats yearly, so he had plenty of time to work on the project. Or rather, have one of his employees work on the project. After drying up a rough blueprint, Edison would assign one of the inventors in his Menlo Park lab to design the product. In the case of the kinetoscope, it was William Kennedy Dixon.

While Dixon toiled away, Edison engaged in negative press campaigns against rivals, some of which used false and intentionally misleading information. He frequently sued anyone who infringed on his hundreds of patents.

wiping out any business that came anywhere near his inventions. So, Edison had a storied history of treating his competitors poorly, and Louis was definitely competition. We mentioned earlier that Lizzie believed industrial spies were trying to steal her husband's ideas. These spies may have even been the reason Louis went back to Leeds to finish his invention.

He was trying to get away from the prying eyes of his competitors. In early 1890, Louis demonstrated his working single-lens camera and projector for the Secretary of the Paris Opera. It was the final step in the authorization of his French patent. Did word of his achievement reach the desk of Thomas Edison? If so, the patent tyrant might have seen him as a threat.

Once again, we return to the train leaving Dijon. Louis brought nothing with him except for a small black suitcase. But after he vanished, authorities searched the train and they found no trace of his bag. According to author and filmmaker Christopher Rollins, it may have held important patent documents, including blueprints and designs for the camera and projector.

Louis had been diligently working on revising his patents to better protect his claims. He and Lizzie hoped that through public demonstrations, they could strengthen their case and prove he'd won the race to invent the first motion picture camera. Conveniently for Edison, Louis disappeared, and they never got to show his work to the world. To make things worse, Lizzie was unable to claim ownership of the patent.

Because his body wasn't found, Louis was categorized as a missing person. The law required a person had to be missing for seven years before they could be declared dead. Until then, no one, not even their spouse, could use their patent. Edison would have known better than anybody how best to keep Louis' work from seeing the light of day. With Louis out of the picture, Edison now had plenty of time to perfect his invention.

William Dixon completed a prototype of the kinetograph and kinetoscope in May 1891. It works similarly to Louis' invention. With its single lens, the kinetograph took photos at 46 frames per second. The film was then fed through the kinetoscope, where viewers could watch the motion picture come to life via a peephole at the top of the machine. Edison held a public demonstration in 1893,

and the invention became a sensation. A year later, the first Kinetoscope parlor opened in New York City, sort of a precursor to the movie theater. The parlor held 10 machines, each playing a different movie. Guests could pay 25 cents and choose any five films to view in the peepholes of each device. Lizzie was furious.

Edison had clearly stolen her husband's invention and was reaping all the benefits of fame and fortune. But with the patent tied up, there was nothing she could do. She finally got her chance at justice in 1898.

The American Mutoscope Company, founded by William Dixon, had overtaken Edison's kinetoscope in popularity. The mutoscope worked similarly, but instead of allowing just one viewer, it could accommodate multiple people watching the same film. But they were alike enough that in 1898, Edison sued the company for infringing on his patent.

The ensuing legal battle was long and complicated, but the American Mutoscope Company came up with an unexpected idea. They called in Louis Le Prince's adult son Adolph to testify against Edison. They hoped Adolph could help prove that Edison was actually infringing on a patent, Louis' single-lens camera.

For Adolph, it meant that he could prove publicly, once and for all, that his father had been the one to invent a working, moving picture camera. He could also damage the business and reputation of Thomas Edison, the man his mother believed was responsible for his father's death. Adolph testified that he had helped his father build his motion picture camera,

To confirm the timeline, he also presented them with his grandmother's death certificate. She had, after all, appeared in the Roundhay garden scene filmed in 1888. She passed away later that year. Adolph argued that if his grandmother was in the movie, it had to have been made prior to her death. Adolph's testimony, as compelling as it was,

could only do so much against patent laws. Louis Le Prince's United States patent was primarily for the 16-lens camera, not the single-lens one. And Adolph was unable to prove that the 16-lens camera described in the patent was not the one that shot the movie featuring his grandmother.

Edison's lawyers argued that Le Prince's United States patent had no claim to a single lens motion picture camera. The judge ruled in Edison's favor. To this day, most still view Thomas Edison as the inventor of motion pictures, due in no small part to that ruling. Then the story takes a darker twist.

A few years after the trial, Adolf was out hunting ducks on Fire Island in New York when he was shot dead. The newspapers reported it as a hunting accident. Others, including his family, believed differently. If Edison had hired men to do away with the father, what would stop him from silencing the son as well?

Lizzie believed, without question, that Thomas Edison was responsible for Louis' disappearance. But ultimately, there's no hard evidence that supports any theory. Louis Le Prince may not have gotten the recognition he deserved when it mattered the most, but we can take some solace in the fact that his name is starting to make its way back into the spotlight.

Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts or email us at conspiracystories at Spotify.com.

For more information on Louis the Prince, amongst the many sources we used, we found The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures by Paul Fisher and The Missing Reel by Christopher Rollins extremely helpful to our research. The audiobook edition of The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures is available for Spotify Premium subscribers in Spotify's audiobook catalog. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story and the official story

isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Chelsea Wood and Becky Tinker, edited by Maggie Admire, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Spencer Howard. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy.

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