Download PDF The Missing Reel: The Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of Moving Pictures, by Christopher Rawlence
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The Missing Reel: The Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of Moving Pictures, by Christopher Rawlence
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Why did a pioneering inventor of the movie camera vanish without trace on the eve of his success? In September 1890 the French inventor Augustine Le Prince boarded a train in Dijon, France, for Paris. For three years he had struggled to perfect a motion picture camera and projector in his Leeds workshop. Now he was on his way home to New York to present the world debut of moving pictures. But Le Prince never reached Paris; and in New York his wife Lizzie waited in vain. He was never seen again. Instead of Le Prince's triumph, it was Thomas A.Edison who claimed first place in the race for one of the most lucrative technological discoveries of all time. This is the untold story of Le Prince's disappearance, of the inventor's restless obsession and of his family's tragic determination to prove that he was the true father of film. It is a detective story and a literary tour de force, reconstructing the optimistic mood of a time when it seemed art and science could save humanity. It is the dramatic tale of ruthless skulduggery on the part of the American corporate battalions. And it is a story of individual hope and betrayal which spans a century and two continents from the streets of 19th century Leeds to the deserted beaches of Fire Island in the 1920s, to London, Paris, New York in the 1890s and an attic in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1988.
- Sales Rank: #1801785 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Atheneum
- Published on: 1990-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
French 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. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Industrial piracy has been around for as long as there have been people with good, patentable ideas and others unscrupulous enough to steal them. This book deals with one such plausible case involving no less a famous personality in the history of American technology than Thomas Edison, who ultimately received the patent for inventing the motion picture. Curiously enough, Edison himself is quoted in the book as having said that "everyone steals in industry and commerce . . . I have stolen a lot myself." Admittedly, there are a number of versions as to who really invented the motion picture. This fast-paced investigative report examines the travails of Augustin Le Prince who was also working on developing cinematography and who died under mysterious circumstances prior to Edison's patent. Of interest to film buffs, this book is recommended for undergraduate and public libraries.
- Sarojini Balachandran, Auburn Univ. Lib., Ala.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
No smoking gun, but something smells suspicious
By Rose Keefe
Louis Aime Augustin LePrince was probably the first inventor to capture moving images on film. A couple of short scenes that he filmed in 1888- `The Roundhay Garden Scene' and `The Leeds Bridge' have survived and can be watched on YouTube. But when LePrince mysteriously disappeared from a Paris-bound train in September 1890, just as he was on the verge of going public with his one-lens camera and accompanying projector, the fame and fortune that would been his went instead to Thomas Edison.
Incredibly, LePrince's family believed that agents of Edison either kidnapped or killed the French inventor to prevent his apparatus from hindering public demand for Edison's Kinetoscope. There is evidence that Augustin LePrince was in serious financial trouble after years of sinking funds into his experiments, and was facing possible bankruptcy, which had him in a despondent state of mind. In 2003 a researcher found in the Paris police archives an 1890 photo of a drowning victim that resembles the missing inventor.
In `The Missing Reel' Christopher Rawlence probes the underside of the early movie industry. While the public thrilled at the sight of boxing cats and sneezing men, the inventors were driving themselves into the ground financially, sabotaging each other's work, and endlessly litigating over who created a particular apparatus first.
The author's interest in LePrince began when he bought a house in Leeds where the inventor had conducted his motion picture experiments. Additional research turned up LePrince relatives in America, who had custody of a memoir left by Augustin's widow, Lizzie. She always maintained that her husband had been killed by those acting for Thomas Edison. When her oldest son, Adolphe, who appeared in the surviving LePrince films and testified against Edison in an 1899 court battle, was shot to death in 1902, she saw the probable suicide as retribution for the earlier testimony.
I found that the book was at times heavily laden with legal and technical jargon pertaining to patent law and camera construction, but overall, `The Missing Reel' triumphs as a well-composed biography of Augustin LePrince and an unsettling whodunit. Rawlence advocates the suicide theory to explain the inventor's disappearance, but presents Mrs. LePrince's suspicion of Thomas Edison without being dismissive. There's no smoking gun here, but you definitely catch a whiff of something suspicious.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Semi-Bungled Chance to Tell an Important Tale
By Gloria Mundi
The 1890 disappearance of Louis Le Prince, the probable first inventor of the motion picture camera, is one of the great underreported mysteries. It is a pity that the first book written about him is not worthy of the fascinating subject.
"The Missing Reel" is so amateurishly put together it becomes positively frustrating to read it. There is no coherent narrative--the author awkwardly jumps back and forth between past and present, making it difficult to follow the flow of the story. Worse, he has an incredibly irritating habit of randomly throwing in his own fictitious speculative scenarios and presenting them as fact, leaving the reader wondering which parts of his book are guessing-games and which are based on solid fact.
Again, this is a terrible shame, because the surprisingly sinister underpinnings of the development of the film industry, coupled with Le Prince's completely unexplained vanishing from the scene, right when he was on the point of revealing his history-making invention to the world, makes for one amazing whodunit. His story would be a wonderful documentary or novel.
Rawlence is rather vague and diffident about presenting the various theories regarding Le Prince's fate. Going by the facts he presents, the most shocking theory--namely, that Le Prince's main rival Thomas Edison was somehow behind his abduction/death--actually seems the most plausible, although Rawlence himself is notably skittish about endorsing the idea. (Even though he admits that his research taught him that Edison was far from the idealistic saint presented by Edison's publicity machine. I definitely got the impression that the author was at least semi-persuaded Edison had a hand in whatever befell Le Prince, but he was afraid to say so.)
The most moving part of the book deals with Le Prince's widow Lizzie. She spent the rest of her life struggling not only to find proof of what had happened to her beloved husband (she herself blamed Edison,) but to earn his accomplishments the acclaim they deserved. She failed on both counts, but her heroism is deserving of its own recognition.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
It's really two books, but only one is about LePrince
By Elwood Conway
The true fate of Augustin Le Prince will most likely never be known. Any and all contemporaries are no longer with us. All we have are stories handed down through generations, foreign patent filings and some other personal papers. I will admit that I enjoyed the various speculations regarding LePrince's ultimate demise. No fewer than three theories are out there and each is explored towards the conclusion of the book. However there is another book in here as well. It's a story about Thomas Edison and his eventual formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company, which catalogs his initial disinterest in motion pictures, through becoming interested, to wanting to become a monopoly, to ultimately losing control of the movie industry. While this is all interesting, it is well covered in other books that are actually about Edison and the trials (liteal) of the formation of the Edison Trust and its ultimate loss of control. In fact, my review is falling victim to the same issue I had with this book...it's spending too much time telling Edison's story. This book could have included all pertinent information regarding Edison and his Trust along with its main subject (LePrince) and come in at a reasonable and satisfying read of about 150-160 pages, instead of the almost 283. The Le Prince stuff is quite good and definitely worth a read. Just skip over the Edison material if all you are interested in is LePrice.
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