- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (21 May 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002151871
- ISBN-13: 978-0002151870
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.5 x 3.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,254,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Synopsis
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.
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3 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
The Missing Reel
20 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
Interesting to consider that Thomas A. Edison could have been so consumed with the need to succeed that he may have had industrial espionage agents steal the prototype of and plans for the first practical movie projector from its inventor, Augustin La Prince, as the author suggests...
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
No smoking gun, but something smells suspicious
11 Sep 2008
Format:Mass Market Paperback
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.
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.
It's really two books, but only one is about LePrince
29 Mar 2012
Format:Hardcover
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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