The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures
A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
One of the New York Times Best True Crime of 2022
A “spellbinding, thriller-like” (Shelf Awareness) history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious, forgotten man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy.
The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his “taker” or “receiver” device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history.
In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince’s rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history—until now.
The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and presents a “passionate, detailed defense of Louis Le Prince…unfurled with all the cliffhangers and red herrings of a scripted melodrama” (The New York Times Book Review). This “fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) presents the never-before-told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Was the man who invented cinematography kidnapped and murdered on the orders of Thomas Edison? Film producer Fischer (A Kim Jong-Il Production) raises that possibility in this fascinating portrait of 19th-century polymath Louis Le Prince. Though Edison and the Lumière brothers are widely credited with inventing movies, Le Prince beat them to the punch. In October 1888, after "four years of furious, costly work," he filmed members of his family on their lawn in Leeds, England, using a 40-pound camera with a hand crank, then projected the "animated photographs" on his workshop wall. Two years after his breakthrough, however, Le Prince boarded a train to Paris after visiting his brother in Dijon and was never seen again. In the seven years it took before he could be legally declared dead and his family gained control of his intellectual property, Edison, a relentless self-promoter, made a fortune showing moving pictures on his Kinetoscope device. After a series of court rulings upheld Edison's patent claims, Le Prince's widow accused the Wizard of Menlo Park of having her husband killed; more recently, film scholars have contended that Le Prince died by suicide. Fischer points the finger at another culprit while admitting that the case may never be solved. Vivid character sketches, lyrical descriptions of the art and science of moviemaking, and a dramatic plot twist make this a must-read.
