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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

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Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh. This is the

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Speaker 1: person that has been on my list for a very

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Speaker 1: long time, and then it kind of shot to the

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Speaker 1: top of the list after we did the Edward Moybridge episode.

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Speaker 1: He's going to come up a little bit today. And

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Speaker 1: then recently I was a guest at Indiana Coma convention

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Speaker 1: and I was chatting with my friend and friend of

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Speaker 1: the show, Brian Young, and he was all, ooh, you

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Speaker 1: should do an episode on Louis La Prince. And I

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Speaker 1: was like, I know he had just been reading about

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Speaker 1: him and was really into the conspiracy of it all.

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Speaker 1: So here's the thing. I'm going to Sunset Boulevard you

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Speaker 1: a little bit. On September sixteenth of eighteen ninety, Louis

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Speaker 1: La Prince vanished. He was never seen or heard from again.

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Speaker 1: The many events that led to that moment have also

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Speaker 1: led to a great deal of speculation about what exactly happened,

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Speaker 1: and that is kind of the most well known thing

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Speaker 1: about him. It has certainly been discussed a lot in

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Speaker 1: film circles. That's where I first learned about him when

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Speaker 1: I was in college getting my theater and Film studies degree.

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Speaker 1: But he had a whole life before that, some of

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Speaker 1: which had nothing to do with film and was very

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Speaker 1: very interesting and filled with other intriguing things. So we

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Speaker 1: are going to talk about, of course, his work in

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Speaker 1: cinematography that was very groundbreaking, and his disappearance, but that's

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Speaker 1: going to be like the last third of the episode,

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Speaker 1: because there's plenty to talk about in his life before that.

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Speaker 1: Another thing to talk about is names. So the prince

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Speaker 1: was named Louis emmet augustein Laplace. He was French. He

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Speaker 1: didn't go by Louis in his day to day life.

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Speaker 1: He signed his name as Augustin in most places, including

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Speaker 1: patent applications and in letters to his wife and some

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Speaker 1: people he was close to, like in his wife's family,

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Speaker 1: called him Gus, taking the gus out of Augusta. But

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of history pieces about him that

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Speaker 1: use his first name. I also noticed that there seems

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Speaker 1: to be a family rule that your first name is

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Speaker 1: not the name you're using. Their children were often named

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Speaker 1: multiple names, and it was like the middle name was

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Speaker 1: always what they went by. But this is a case

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Speaker 1: where he has written about so much as Louis le

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Speaker 1: Prince or Louis la Prince, that we're going to make

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Speaker 1: an exception of our usual policy, where we would normally

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Speaker 1: default calling someone the name they chose to go by.

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Speaker 1: But even in this case, when I would be reading

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Speaker 1: books about him, some biographers do use Augustin and it

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Speaker 1: felt almost like jarring to me. So we're gonna go

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Speaker 1: by Louis. The other thing is that, as I said

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Speaker 1: he was French, his last name would have been pronounced

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Speaker 1: laplace in France, but because he lived in England and

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Speaker 1: New York in a lot of his lifetime and certainly

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Speaker 1: in his mature years, like as an adult throughout his career,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people, including many historians, just used the

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Speaker 1: more anglicized La Prince. And we will probably do the

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Speaker 1: same thing. Same thing happened to me. I was watching

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Speaker 1: a video and at one curator at a museum said Laprince,

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Speaker 1: and I was like, who are they talking about? It's

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Speaker 1: that odd if you're familiar with this story. So we

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Speaker 1: will be calling him Louis la Prince if you want

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Speaker 1: the more French version to say it. In your head.

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Speaker 1: Great Louis la Prince was born on August twenty eighth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen forty one and Metz, France, which is in the

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Speaker 1: northeast of the country, near the border with Germany and Luxembourg.

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Speaker 1: His father was Louis Abraham and Bois La Prince, military captain,

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Speaker 1: and his mother was Elizabeth Marie Antoinette Boulebert. During his

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Speaker 1: earliest years, La Prince was maybe getting a unique education

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Speaker 1: through exposure to a family friend that was Louis de Guer.

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Speaker 1: De Geer was friends with the Prince's father, and while

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Speaker 1: the inventor of photography and the young La Prince only

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Speaker 1: overlapped by ten years before Degert died, he is often

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Speaker 1: cited as an influence on La Prince. Yeah, it's unclear

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Speaker 1: how much of this is like convenient lore versus how

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Speaker 1: it actually played out, but Louis La Prince is said

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Speaker 1: to have often visited de gher in his studio when

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Speaker 1: he was still a child, although we really don't know

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Speaker 1: with any certainty if the photography pioneer ever imparted any

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Speaker 1: of his knowledge to the young man. There is a

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Speaker 1: degherattype of the La Prince family from the late eighteen forties.

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Speaker 1: That may or may not have been made by de

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Speaker 1: Guer himself. It may have also been made by one

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Speaker 1: of his assistants. After his elementary education, Louis went to

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Speaker 1: school away from his family in Bourges, France. That's about

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Speaker 1: three hundred and twenty miles or five hundred and fifteen

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Speaker 1: kilometers southwest of Mets, near the center of the country.

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Speaker 1: After that, he moved on to Paris and the Lise

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Speaker 1: Saint Luis to get an undergraduate degree in science. Then

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Speaker 1: he moved on to advance study in physics and chemistry

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Speaker 1: in Germany. He was also interested in art, and he

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Speaker 1: studied painting and dabbled in photography. After his graduate studies,

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Speaker 1: Le Prince met a man named John Robinson Whitley, and

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Speaker 1: that meeting, it is fair to say, changed the course

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Speaker 1: of his life. Whitley was the son of Joseph and

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Speaker 1: Sarah Whitley. Joseph was a brass founder, meaning someone who

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Speaker 1: cast items in brass, and he had opened his own

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Speaker 1: brass foundry in Leeds, England in eighteen forty four, John,

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Speaker 1: who was Joseph and Sarah's oldest son, was sent to

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Speaker 1: Germany to study as part of the preparation for him

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Speaker 1: to continue to expand the family business, and both John

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Speaker 1: and Louis attended Leipzig University for a time, but that

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Speaker 1: was not where they actually met. It wasn't until they

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Speaker 1: were both in Paris after finishing their education in Germany

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Speaker 1: that they were connected. After Whitley received a letter from

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Speaker 1: one of their former professors suggesting that they meet, like, Hey,

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Speaker 1: do you know Louis la Prince? I think you guys

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Speaker 1: should really get along. Uh. And he was right because

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Speaker 1: once they did meet up, Whitley and La Prince became

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Speaker 1: very good friends. John invited La Prince to come to

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Speaker 1: Leeds for a visit in eighteen sixty six. Leeds is

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Speaker 1: in the County of Yorkshire, roughly two hundred miles north

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Speaker 1: of London and about forty five miles northeast of Manchester.

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Speaker 1: The Prince was happy to accept John Whitley's invitation, in

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Speaker 1: part because while the two men had been in Paris

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Speaker 1: after finishing school, John had introduced Louis to John's sister,

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Speaker 1: Sarah Elizabeth, who went by Lizzie. Lizzie was twenty at

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Speaker 1: the time. She was in Paris studying art, and she

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Speaker 1: and the twenty five year old Louis hit it off immediately.

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Speaker 1: They were a good match. They were both incredibly smart,

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Speaker 1: and they shared interest in art. They spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time together over the course of a few months

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Speaker 1: in Paris, and at one point even took a long

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Speaker 1: drive out to the country so that Louis could introduce

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Speaker 1: Lizzie to his mother. That was a trip that apparently

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Speaker 1: enchanted Lizzie. Yes, she loved everything about French country life.

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Speaker 1: John Whitley, though, did have his own agenda in inviting

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Speaker 1: Louis to Leeds. He was hoping that La Prince would

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Speaker 1: like it there and that he would become part of

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Speaker 1: their family business. Whitley had recognized immediately that Louis possessed

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Speaker 1: this really unique and very beneficial skill set. He was,

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Speaker 1: as Tracy just said, super smart. He was multi lingual,

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Speaker 1: he had technical drawing training, he understood the science and

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Speaker 1: chemistry that could benefit a foundry, and his math skills

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Speaker 1: were also really really strong. Kind of an amazing package,

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Speaker 1: and when Whitley proffered an offer of employment, Louis took

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Speaker 1: it immediately. In eighteen sixty seven, La Prince traveled to

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Speaker 1: the Exposisy on Universal and Paris as a member of

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Speaker 1: the Whitley Foundry team. It's not clear whether he had

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Speaker 1: made the permanent move to Leeds yet at this time,

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Speaker 1: or he may have taken advantage of the trip back

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Speaker 1: to France to kind of wrap things up ahead of

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Speaker 1: a more permanent relocation. The exposition ran for six months

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Speaker 1: and Louis was there for most of it. That would

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Speaker 1: have given him time to handle anything that he might

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Speaker 1: have needed to wrap up while he was in France.

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Speaker 1: The Whitley Foundry won a silver medal at the exposition,

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Speaker 1: and once the Expo was finished, le Prince was living

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Speaker 1: in Leeds, and just as John and Lizzie had both

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Speaker 1: grown to love Louis, so too did their father, Joseph.

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Speaker 1: At times, according to Lizzie, it seemed that Joseph and

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Speaker 1: John might actually have some adversarial friction over their close

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Speaker 1: friendships with Louis, like they each wanted to be closer

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Speaker 1: to him. The father and son clearly had some friction

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Speaker 1: of their own. They would have a bigger conflict later on,

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Speaker 1: but in the late eighteen sixties they both gladly welcomed

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Speaker 1: Louis in to their family, and on July first of

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, Louis and Lizzie were married. As a

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Speaker 1: newly married couple, Lizzie and Louis moved into the neighborhood

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Speaker 1: of Chapeltown. There were more big changes. Louis became a

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Speaker 1: partner in the Whitley Foundry, and the couple learned they

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Speaker 1: were expecting a child not long after the wedding. A daughter,

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Speaker 1: who is sometimes referred to as Marie Gabriella and sometimes

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Speaker 1: as Mary Ella, was born in early eighteen seventy. Coming up,

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the military conflict that had

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Speaker 1: a significant impact on Louis la Prince's life, but first

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Speaker 1: we will pause for a sponsor break. In eighteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: the Franco Prussian War impacted Louie's life significantly, even though

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Speaker 1: he was not living in France at the time. That,

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Speaker 1: of course, is a whole multinational conflict. But the short version,

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Speaker 1: so that we can give you context, is that France,

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Speaker 1: which was led by Napoleon the Third at the time,

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Speaker 1: was getting deeply uneasy about the power amassing in the

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Speaker 1: coalition of German states that was coming together under Otto

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Speaker 1: von Bismarck, who was the Prime Minister of Prussia. Bismarck

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Speaker 1: and Napoleon the Third had ongoing friction and that culminated

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Speaker 1: eventually in France declaring war on Prussia in July of

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy. This was perceived as not a wise move,

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Speaker 1: and there was not a lot of support for France

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Speaker 1: in Europe on this one, and Napoleon's military was almost

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Speaker 1: instantly in over their heads. The Prussian military had superior

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Speaker 1: mobilization and they were able on several occasions to surprise

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Speaker 1: the French. Meanwhile, France was trying to fight using pretty

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Speaker 1: old school tactics of military engagement rather than the more

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Speaker 1: guerrilla style tactics that Prussia is credited with employing, so

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Speaker 1: that just did not go well. At the Battle of

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Speaker 1: Saddan in the first days of September eighteen seventy, Napoleon

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Speaker 1: the Third surrendered and he was taken prisoner. This did not, though,

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Speaker 1: result in a treaty, and Paris was in the sights

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Speaker 1: of the German States coalition. Meanwhile, back in Leeds, in

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Speaker 1: addition to reading news reports about the conflict, Louis was

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Speaker 1: also receiving letters from his brother Albert as it became

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Speaker 1: a parent that Paris was likely to be engulfed in

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Speaker 1: the war, Louis made the decision to race to the

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Speaker 1: French capital to try to get his mother out before

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Speaker 1: things became dangerous for her. He was also hoping to

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Speaker 1: get Albert's wife, Gabrielle, and their baby out. Louis got

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Speaker 1: caught up in a riot while he was in Paris.

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Speaker 1: Biographer Paul Fisher makes this sound very much like he

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Speaker 1: accidentally stumbled into this conflict from a side street as

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Speaker 1: things were escalating. In his twenty twenty two book The

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Speaker 1: Man Who Invented Motion Pictures. There are also news articles

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Speaker 1: from the time that really made clear that Louis was

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Speaker 1: not at all involved in this event that he became

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Speaker 1: came a part of. Because Napoleon the Third had surrendered,

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Speaker 1: the power vacuum that he left behind was seized as

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Speaker 1: an opportunity for France to become a republic once again.

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Speaker 1: So at this point France is fighting internally because some

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Speaker 1: people wanted that and others did not, and they were

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Speaker 1: fighting against the forces of Prussia and the coalition behind it.

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Speaker 1: And so when La Prince arrived at this scene of

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Speaker 1: this riot, he was arrested along with the agitators, and

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Speaker 1: this set off a kind of wild series of events.

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Speaker 1: Authorities suspected Labrence was a Prussian spy. When he didn't

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Speaker 1: arrive when his mother expected him, he was reported as

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Speaker 1: a missing person. She contacted the paper Latmpe and noted

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Speaker 1: that a description of a man arrested at the riots

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Speaker 1: sounded like Louis. This led to an English journalist to

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Speaker 1: initiating an investigation, and that led to Louis being released

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Speaker 1: on August twenty second. Yeah, it was suddenly reported like, hey,

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Speaker 1: we all think Louis the Prince is here somewhere being held,

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Speaker 1: and he was for about a week. Once he was released,

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Speaker 1: Louis got his mother and his sister in law and

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Speaker 1: his baby niece back to Leeds and to safety. But

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Speaker 1: his arrest and what he had seen while he was

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Speaker 1: in France had left a really significant impression on him,

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Speaker 1: and he had become aware of just how dangerous things

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Speaker 1: were in Paris and what his countrymen were enduring to

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Speaker 1: try to defend France. So once his family was settled

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Speaker 1: in safely with Lizzie, Louis returned to France to fight

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Speaker 1: against the Prussians. He was stationed in Paris and that

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Speaker 1: fight went very, very poorly. After an initial period where

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Speaker 1: it was kind of a standoff as Paris was fortifying

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Speaker 1: and the enemy forces were kind of just hanging outside

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Speaker 1: the city. A few efforts were made by France to

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Speaker 1: get the jump on the German states, including using balloons.

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Speaker 1: This would be a great episode at some point, I

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Speaker 1: don't know when didn't work great. The French huffs were

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Speaker 1: not successful, and the transition that then happened through the

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Speaker 1: fall and into winter led to disease and hunger as

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Speaker 1: their supplies ran out. So when the French troops that

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Speaker 1: were at this point trapped in Paris because they were surrounded,

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Speaker 1: were finally forced to initiate a ground battle out of desperation,

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Speaker 1: they lost thousands of lives. Throughout all of this, there

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Speaker 1: was really not much information available to people in England,

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Speaker 1: so the La Prince family didn't know what was happening

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Speaker 1: or if they would ever see Louis again. Back in Paris,

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Speaker 1: La Prince assisted a military surgeon pulling fallen men from

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Speaker 1: battle for transport and then later burying the bodies of

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Speaker 1: both men who were killed in the conflict and those

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Speaker 1: who died from disease. After the new French government surrendered

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Speaker 1: at the end of January eighteen seventy one. Louis was

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Speaker 1: able to return home, but the trauma of this experience

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Speaker 1: as said to have changed his demeanor significantly. The transition

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Speaker 1: back to work and whatever passed for normal life at

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Speaker 1: that point for him came at a time when the

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Speaker 1: Whitley Foundry where he was working was also going through

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Speaker 1: a huge change because his friend and brother in law,

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Speaker 1: John was taking over the business from his father Joseph,

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Speaker 1: and John wanted to make a lot of big changes

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Speaker 1: to the business in an effort to expand and to

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Speaker 1: keep pace with the state of the Industrial Revolution. John

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Speaker 1: Whitley really wanted to take advantage of the growing connectivity

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Speaker 1: of Europe as the railway expanded, and he wanted to

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Speaker 1: create new products that would appeal to countries outside of

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Speaker 1: England that they could now reach thanks to those railroads,

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Speaker 1: and this plan offered Louis an opportunity to kind of

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Speaker 1: become a workaholic and focus all of his attention on

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Speaker 1: his technical draftsman work. This has been interpreted by a

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Speaker 1: number of biographers as possibly being away that he was

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Speaker 1: kind of working through his war trauma. There's been some

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Speaker 1: suspicion that he would probably be diagnosed with something like

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Speaker 1: PTSD today, but we don't know for sure. But the

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Speaker 1: problem was that John Whitley had made some egregious errors.

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Speaker 1: He had overestimated the Whitley Company's potential market and in

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Speaker 1: producing products that were not proven. He carried the company

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Speaker 1: into very significant debt and ultimately into bankruptcy. This led

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Speaker 1: to a huge family conflict among the Whitleys, and John

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Speaker 1: and his father Joseph stopped speaking to one another. John

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Speaker 1: moved away to Paris, but he and La Prince remained

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Speaker 1: close friends. As the company was falling into disarray. Over

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Speaker 1: the course of several years, Louis and Lizzie were expanding

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Speaker 1: their family. They welcomed their first son, Louis Adolf, who

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Speaker 1: went by Adolph, in eighteen seventy two. Two more children

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Speaker 1: were born in eighteen seventy four. In eighteen seventy five,

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Speaker 1: their daughter Henriette I Mean and another son, Joseph Augustine,

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Speaker 1: so three new babies. As the families livelihood was really

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Speaker 1: in a financial freefall. Louis had invested in Whitley and

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Speaker 1: that money was not going to come back to him. No.

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Speaker 1: When he had become a partner, he had bought into

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Speaker 1: the firm and that was a bad investment. But Lizzie

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Speaker 1: and Louie recognized what was happening, and before the firm

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Speaker 1: did declare bankruptcy and shut down, Louie had already tendered

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Speaker 1: his resignation. The couple were very much a team and

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Speaker 1: they both applied to get their teaching licenses and took

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Speaker 1: the Arts and Sciences examination in South Kensington to become

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Speaker 1: certified as teachers. And they did this not because they

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Speaker 1: were planning to just go out and seek teaching jobs,

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Speaker 1: but they were planning to open their own school and

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Speaker 1: they did, the Leeds Technical School of Art, and that

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Speaker 1: opened at the beginning of eighteen seventy five. This was

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Speaker 1: a private school that they ran out of their home

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Speaker 1: at thirty three Park Square and it was really quite successful.

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Speaker 1: Even so, the la Princes did end up taking some

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Speaker 1: side teaching jobs to supplement their incomes. A bit of

305
00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:03,040
Speaker 1: good fortune grew out of their work with the art

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Speaker 1: school when Louis and Lizzie and many of their students

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Speaker 1: brought items they had been working on to display at

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Speaker 1: the Yorkshire Exhibition of Arts and Manufacturers in the late

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Speaker 1: spring of eighteen seventy five. Louis had been working on

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Speaker 1: creating tiny enamel portraits on porcelain tiles. He had developed

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Speaker 1: a careful firing process for these so that none of

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00:18:25,280 --> 00:18:27,960
Speaker 1: the really delicate work would be damaged in the kill.

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Speaker 1: These got the attention of Queen Victoria's son, Prince Alfred,

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Speaker 1: the first Duke of Edinburgh, when he visited the expo.

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Speaker 1: He was given several of the pieces as gifts on

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Speaker 1: the spot, and this led to some commissioned work for

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Speaker 1: the royal family. As a consequence, Louis found his social

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Speaker 1: profile elevated. He was asked to be involved in a

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Speaker 1: number of art societies and charitable organizations, and he also

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00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:57,480
Speaker 1: became a freemason during this time. Building on the success

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Speaker 1: of those miniature portraits, the Prince started work working on

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Speaker 1: finding more ways to embellish porcelain, which led him to

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Speaker 1: start thinking about applying photographs to not just tiles, but

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00:19:08,200 --> 00:19:11,359
Speaker 1: also to things like cups and plates. So this is

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Speaker 1: really the beginning of novelty Chinaware. If you buy those today,

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00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:20,800
Speaker 1: you can thank Louis le Prince. He figured out how

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Speaker 1: to glaze and fire these so that the image remained

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Speaker 1: super clear, and if there was a color picture involved,

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00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:31,720
Speaker 1: that those colors stayed super vibrant. Le Prince continued to

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Speaker 1: work with the idea of photo transfer until he could

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00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:37,800
Speaker 1: also replicate images on metal, and he took a number

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Speaker 1: of his finest pieces to the Exposition Universell in eighteen

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Speaker 1: seventy eight, returning once more to Paris, and that was

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Speaker 1: a very successful outing for him. He won special recognition

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00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:51,200
Speaker 1: at the expo. As he was preparing for the expo,

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00:19:51,520 --> 00:19:55,360
Speaker 1: Louis and Lizzie welcomed another son, Leon Fernand, who went

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Speaker 1: by Fernand, and then in eighteen eighty they had their

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00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:01,920
Speaker 1: last child, another son named on John died at the

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00:20:01,960 --> 00:20:04,800
Speaker 1: age of two, and the remaining five La Prince's children

340
00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:09,880
Speaker 1: lived into adulthood. Louie's oldest son, Adolf, started to assist

341
00:20:09,960 --> 00:20:12,359
Speaker 1: him in the lab at an early age after showing

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00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:15,639
Speaker 1: a lot of interest in his father's work. La Prince

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00:20:15,800 --> 00:20:18,199
Speaker 1: didn't allow his kids in the lab because of the

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00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:21,760
Speaker 1: chemicals that were stored there, but after Adulf snuck in

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Speaker 1: multiple times and apparently broke some items. At one point,

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00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:30,640
Speaker 1: Louis decided to teach his son about his work. Yeah

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00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:32,720
Speaker 1: apparently he could not keep a Dolph out of that room.

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00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,400
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the eighteen eighties, Louis was once

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00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:39,600
Speaker 1: again connected with his old friend and former business partner

350
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Speaker 1: and still his brother in law, John Whitley. Whitley at

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00:20:43,480 --> 00:20:46,680
Speaker 1: this point had gotten connected to the home decor industry

352
00:20:46,720 --> 00:20:49,680
Speaker 1: and was working with a flooring and wall covering inventor

353
00:20:50,200 --> 00:20:54,840
Speaker 1: who maybe a future episode, almost certainly to develop products

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00:20:54,840 --> 00:20:57,720
Speaker 1: for the US market, and he once again made an

355
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Speaker 1: offer to La Prince to move to another country, but

356
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Speaker 1: this time to New York. This might seem sort of random,

357
00:21:04,359 --> 00:21:07,760
Speaker 1: but Louie and Lizzie were involved already in home decre

358
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Speaker 1: through their design school, and they had both been teaching

359
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:14,119
Speaker 1: courses on it and working on the side as designers

360
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:17,640
Speaker 1: for people taking commissions, so it really made a lot

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Speaker 1: of sense, and Louie agreed to go with John on

362
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:23,320
Speaker 1: what was basically a scouting visit to the US to

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00:21:23,359 --> 00:21:27,960
Speaker 1: see if the market seemed lucrative. And Whitley was banking

364
00:21:28,119 --> 00:21:31,040
Speaker 1: on the nouveau reach of New York to just want

365
00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:35,439
Speaker 1: tons of home decor because that was the popular style,

366
00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:40,439
Speaker 1: right was a lot of layered things, chochkeys of plenty, stuff, stuff, stuff,

367
00:21:41,080 --> 00:21:42,879
Speaker 1: and Louie really fell in love with the city and

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00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:45,359
Speaker 1: when he returned to Leeds after this scouting trip. He

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00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:48,040
Speaker 1: and Lizzie discussed the idea of what it would take

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Speaker 1: to relocate the whole family and whether it was worth it,

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Speaker 1: and they made the decision that they were going to go.

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Speaker 1: So they closed down their school and they headed to

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Speaker 1: New York. That decision was probably informed in part by

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Speaker 1: a significant debt that Louis Le Prince had from the

375
00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:06,320
Speaker 1: time when the Whitley Foundry had collapsed. He had borrowed

376
00:22:06,359 --> 00:22:09,199
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty pounds and he had not repaid it.

377
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:13,680
Speaker 1: Lizzie had discovered this information when a letter arrived at

378
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Speaker 1: the house while Louis was on the scouting trip demanding repayment.

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Speaker 1: They paid a small amount back before leaving England, with

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00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:25,520
Speaker 1: the intent that more installments would follow. Yeah. He basically

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00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 1: came home to Lizzie being like, Hey, were you gonna

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00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:30,800
Speaker 1: tell me about this? Uh? Their new life in New

383
00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:34,480
Speaker 1: York was rocky at the start. Lizzie's brother John had

384
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:37,560
Speaker 1: really not gotten any better at running a business than

385
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:40,119
Speaker 1: he had been when he drove the foundry into the ground,

386
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:45,160
Speaker 1: and as his home deck business was tanking, John then

387
00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:48,920
Speaker 1: decided he wanted Louie to travel across the US with him,

388
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 1: a lot of it on horseback, to find a tract

389
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 1: of land where they could start an artists colony. This

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00:22:55,880 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: was apparently a very grueling trip. Louie actually really enjoyed it. John,

391
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:03,960
Speaker 1: on the other hand, did not, and he lost interest

392
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,280
Speaker 1: in this whole artist colony idea, and by the time

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00:23:07,320 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 1: they had gone to the West Coast, he was like,

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00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:10,480
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to move back to England.

395
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Speaker 1: But Louis wanted to stay in New York. He really

396
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:16,680
Speaker 1: liked being in the US, and he started his own

397
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:19,880
Speaker 1: decor business with a different partner. That business was called

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00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 1: Le Prince and Pepper. During this time, Lizzie started working

399
00:23:24,040 --> 00:23:27,320
Speaker 1: at a job that she found incredibly fulfilling. She started

400
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:30,399
Speaker 1: teaching at the Washington Heights School for the Deaf and Mute,

401
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:34,919
Speaker 1: and she established and ran its art department. This was

402
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 1: something she and her husband ended up working on together,

403
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 1: as his firm didn't have enough work to really keep

404
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: him busy, so he started teaching art lessons at the

405
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: school as part of an art therapy program. But he

406
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:49,199
Speaker 1: needed an income, and his work at the school with

407
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:53,359
Speaker 1: Lizzie was a volunteer situation. He did become close friends

408
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:57,400
Speaker 1: with Lizzie's boss, Isaac Lewis Peat, and that relationship would

409
00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:01,560
Speaker 1: benefit him in a later endeavor. As he hunted for

410
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:05,920
Speaker 1: other opportunities, Louis made the acquaintance of another French gentleman

411
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 1: in the city, panorama painter Teofi la Puigpot. Like La Prince,

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00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,920
Speaker 1: Pualpo had an art background, and he had also served

413
00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:17,960
Speaker 1: in the Franco Prussian War, so the two men probably

414
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: had a lot in common. We've discussed the popularity of

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00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: panoramas during the late nineteenth century on the show before,

416
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:28,160
Speaker 1: and Pualpo was very good at it. He had more

417
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: work than he could keep up with, so he hired

418
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: Louis to help him, both as an artist and kind

419
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 1: of as a business manager, and this partnership really got

420
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 1: La Prince back on his feet financially. He did one

421
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,399
Speaker 1: very big project for Puelpo that got a lot of

422
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: critical acclaim and brought in a lot of cash. But

423
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: he didn't stay with Puagpo for long, even though he

424
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:52,680
Speaker 1: was invited to, because Louis La Prince had become fascinated

425
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 1: with the idea of moving pictures. It was something that

426
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:59,480
Speaker 1: had been on his mind even before meeting the panoramist

427
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: and working in panorama had actually only stoked that fire.

428
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: In just a minute, we will finally get to the

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00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: motion picture part of la Prince's life, but first we

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00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:23,400
Speaker 1: will hear from the sponsors that keep the show going blue.

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00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: La Prince's interest in moving pictures seems pretty natural when

432
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 1: you consider his already established lifelong interest in art and

433
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: photography and new ways to reproduce images. At the same

434
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:38,879
Speaker 1: time that La Prince was working on fixative methods to

435
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 1: create unique porcelain, prior podcast subject, Edward Moybridge was developing

436
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: his method for capturing the movement of a galloping horse

437
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 1: by using an array of still cameras and snapping them

438
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: in sequence as the horse ran by. That was kind

439
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:57,240
Speaker 1: of the dawn of cinema, but Moybridge's though a praxiscope,

440
00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:00,680
Speaker 1: was just a single rotating glass plate, he couldn't really

441
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:04,879
Speaker 1: capture anything more than a few seconds of movement. The

442
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: next step forward for motion picture was the invention of

443
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: the krona photograph. This was the work of a French scientist,

444
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:16,920
Speaker 1: Ettianjul Moray, who may be a future episode, and it

445
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 1: was something that Murray, who was a physiologist worked on

446
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: to advance his own understanding of body mechanics through movement.

447
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 1: This was an interesting looking device. Was literally a shotgun

448
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: style mechanism with a circular magazine on it that contained

449
00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 1: photosensitive silver bromide gelatin plates. It captured twelve images per

450
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: second and then put every image on the same plate.

451
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: It was also very cool, but not a way to

452
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,879
Speaker 1: capture motion for replay. Yeah, if you look at a

453
00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: photograph of this, it's literally a gun with his weird

454
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: big barrel on it. People actually call it a camera

455
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 1: gun sometimes and then enter an episcopal priest named Hannibal Goodwin.

456
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: So Goodwin was interested in photography as a hobby, and

457
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: he developed the first film that was flexible and could

458
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,639
Speaker 1: be rolled up like Murray. He was solving a problem

459
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 1: for his own unrelated work. He wanted to make photographs

460
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 1: of biblical scenes that he could use in Sunday school lessons,

461
00:27:19,520 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: but the existing ways to capture images were heavy and cumbersome,

462
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 1: and he thought that if he could come up with

463
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: a lighter setup or an easier setup, it would just

464
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 1: make his whole project infinitely easier and better. The Kodak

465
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,920
Speaker 1: camera that was available at the time solved some of

466
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:37,920
Speaker 1: the problem, but you then had to send the entire

467
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:41,119
Speaker 1: camera back to Kodak to their factory to have your

468
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,680
Speaker 1: images processed, and Goodwin didn't like that either, so he

469
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 1: invented a new film that he could process himself. This

470
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: new film was the first celluloid. It was made using

471
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: nitro cellulose, that cellulose that has been exposed to nitric

472
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:01,880
Speaker 1: acid and sulfuric acid and nitroben more commonly known today

473
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:06,119
Speaker 1: as nitro benzene that is a highly toxic yellow liquid

474
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: with an oily texture, and this what's often described as

475
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: a sharp almond aroma. Nitro Cellulose is highly flammable, So

476
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 1: in combining these two things and then diluting them with alcohol,

477
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: Goodwin was doing something really risky in terms of just

478
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 1: chemical exposure, although he probably was not at all aware

479
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: of just how risky. When Goodwin poured his toxic mixture

480
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: onto glass and let the moisture evaporate from it, the

481
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 1: remaining film could capture images after it was coated with emulsion,

482
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: and it could be cut in strips and rolled into film.

483
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: Goodwin and Kodak applied for role film patents at the

484
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 1: same time, which resulted in a court battle that was

485
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: not settled for years. Goodwin's estate finally got a large

486
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: payout from Kodak in the early nineteen hundreds, which was

487
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: several years after Goodwin died. So all of this was

488
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: going on at the same time that Louis la Prince

489
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 1: was getting really excited about film, and this takes us

490
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:05,479
Speaker 1: back to that friendship we mentioned earlier with Lizzie's boss.

491
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 1: So the school had a workshop and Pete let La

492
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:13,200
Speaker 1: Prince use it as he tried to build on the

493
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,240
Speaker 1: work of these other inventors to unify their ideas into

494
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: a device that could finally capture movement on film to

495
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 1: be replayed later. But exactly how la Prince went about

496
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: this is very unclear because he did not make any

497
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: notes of his process. What we know about it actually

498
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: comes from statements that were given later after the fact

499
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: by people who La Prince hired to make or assist

500
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: with various components. But we know that in eighteen eighty six,

501
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: with the help of several different mechanics and machinists, La

502
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: Prince developed a sixteen lens camera. He applied for a

503
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: US patent on this device on November tewod. His patent

504
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: was for both the camera and the procedure for using it,

505
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 1: including projection from the same apparatus. It was titled Method

506
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: of an Apparatus for producing animated pictures of natural scenery

507
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 1: and life. Here is how la Prince described his device quote,

508
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: in order to carry out my method, I provide an

509
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: apparatus consisting of a receiver or photo camera and a

510
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: deliverer or stereo opticon adapted to throw the transparent pictures

511
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: obtained by same order and time in which they were taken,

512
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: as will be hereinafter fully described and claimed, the transparent

513
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 1: pictures thrown in quick succession on a finely ground plate, glass,

514
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: or other suitable material will produce on the eye of

515
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: the spectator the same effect or impression as the objects

516
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 1: themselves when in motion in front of the camera receiver.

517
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: He received approval for the patent in early eighteen eighty eight.

518
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 1: That was a long time for it to clear, and

519
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: that's because there were problems. The patent office noted that

520
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: he was really patenting two different devices, a camera and

521
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: a projector, and the patent office also thought that his

522
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: camera might be too similar to other patents that had

523
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: been filed, including Edward Moybridge's La Prence got a lawyer involved,

524
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: and a lot of back and forth ensued with the

525
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,760
Speaker 1: patent office, including La Prince going in person to the

526
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: patent office to discover that there were some misunderstandings about

527
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: the workings of his invention, specifically that it was one

528
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: apparatus that did both the filming and the projecting, not

529
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: two different things under one patent application. But eventually things

530
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: were resolved and he received his patents. But that combination

531
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: patent might have been more of a problem than it

532
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: was worth, because La Prince had a really hard time

533
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: getting the projection element to work, so much so that

534
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:49,480
Speaker 1: he had to cancel public demonstrations that were planned to

535
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: showcase it. There were people in his inner circle who

536
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:56,040
Speaker 1: later claimed to have seen it work though, Yeah, one

537
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: of his daughters in particular claimed that she had snuck

538
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:03,719
Speaker 1: in his workshop and had seen it functioning, But other

539
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: people he knew also said the same thing, that they

540
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: had seen it. But in that time, I mean it

541
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: was a year and change before that patent came through.

542
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: La Prince actually moved back to Europe sort of temporarily.

543
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: He had been offered use of the old Whitley Foundry

544
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: workshop in Leeds by his in laws, and his mother

545
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 1: was also quite ill in Paris, so in early eighteen

546
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: eighty seven he and his oldest son Adolf crossed the

547
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: Atlantic and then he went on to Paris to be

548
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: with his mother. In May. Lizzie stayed in New York

549
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: with the rest of their children because the Prince had

550
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:40,560
Speaker 1: not wanted to relocate all of them just for what

551
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: he thought was a temporary work travel. While he was

552
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 1: there in Paris, he reconnected with the Panoramas Pois Pout

553
00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 1: who was back there, and he also worked with some

554
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 1: machinists locally to continue refining his camera. His mother, Elizabeth

555
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 1: died on May twenty eighth, and he kept working on

556
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: his camera while griev and then eventually moved back to

557
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 1: Leeds to continue his work back with his in laws.

558
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: One of the problems with the existing apparatus was that

559
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 1: while sixteen lenses captured movement well, the incremental shifts and

560
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: angles created weird distortions when the picture was projected. He

561
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 1: eventually ditched the sixteen lens design and paired it down

562
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: to a single lens, But like his initial work, we

563
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 1: just don't know much about why specifically he changed it

564
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: so drastically. What we know is mostly from what he

565
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: shared in letters to Lizzie. He noted that having to

566
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: plan each little detail was astonishing and it took so

567
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: much time to get parts, and he worried that he'd

568
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: be held up through Christmas. It was actually well passed that.

569
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: Once he had the US patent and refined his machine

570
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 1: in January of eighteen eighty eight, La Prince immediately filed

571
00:33:55,480 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: for patents in Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary and it yeah,

572
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: he was not messing around with patents. And then later

573
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: that year in October, La Prince captured what is believed

574
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: today to be the world's first film. It is known

575
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 1: as round Hay Garden scene, and that's a reference to

576
00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 1: the garden at his in law's house. We've talked about

577
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:20,279
Speaker 1: early film efforts on the show before, and this one

578
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 1: is his unassuming and consequently sort of charming as any other.

579
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 1: If Eature's four People in a Garden in Leeds. It

580
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 1: is La Prince's son Adolf, his in laws Joseph and

581
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: Sarah Whitley, and a family friend named Annie Hartley. It

582
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: was shot on paper roll film made by Kodak, and

583
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:40,839
Speaker 1: it's only a few seconds long, and it shows all

584
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:45,120
Speaker 1: four people in motion. One is walking, one is stepping backwards,

585
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: the other two are dancing. And in recent years there

586
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: have been additional frames of films that he made that

587
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: have been discovered, but round Hay Garden scene really remains

588
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: kind of the most well known and the one that

589
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: is believed to have been the first. Once the Prince

590
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: had perfected the camera, he wanted to do the same

591
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 1: for the projector part of the device, and that ran

592
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 1: right into eighteen eighty nine. The solution ended up being celluloid.

593
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: Prior to that, he'd been using emulsion coded paper, but

594
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: the superior flexibility of celluloid would have solved some of

595
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,399
Speaker 1: the problems that he was having with threading and continuity.

596
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 1: He was so convinced that he had perfected his camera

597
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 1: that he sent Adolph back to New York in the

598
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 1: autumn of eighteen eighty nine with instructions to have Lizzie

599
00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: start looking for venues where they could demonstrate the new

600
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: version of the machine. She purchased the historic and rumored

601
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 1: to be haunted Morris Jammel Mansion in Washington Heights and

602
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,880
Speaker 1: started to renovate it as their home and the showcase

603
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: for her husband's work. Louis did continue to tinker with

604
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: his invention even after he had sent a Dolph home, though,

605
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 1: because he kept writing to Lizzie that he had new

606
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: problems popping up that had to be solved with it,

607
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 1: and as he updated the apparatus, he was pretty careful

608
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: to file addendums to his various patents, and those addendums,

609
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:08,320
Speaker 1: in some cases offer clues to just how similar his

610
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:11,920
Speaker 1: work was to the motion picture machines that eventually came

611
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: to be, including one that describes transparency strips with holes

612
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 1: punched along the edges that fitted onto teeth on guide rollers. Finally,

613
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: in early eighteen ninety, La Prince was satisfied with the

614
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,840
Speaker 1: apparatus enough so that he demonstrated it to the secretary

615
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: of the Paris Opera, Fernand Moobson, who documented this meeting.

616
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: It seemed as though things were starting to click into place.

617
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 1: La Prince, who had been in a fragile financial situation

618
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:46,399
Speaker 1: for years at that point, seemed poised to turn things

619
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: around with the product of his work. He was going

620
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: to visit his brother, then make his way home to

621
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 1: New York. In September, he traveled to Brittany with a

622
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:58,320
Speaker 1: couple he knew from Leeds, and then onto Dijon alone.

623
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: Were still settling the estate of their late mother and

624
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:05,360
Speaker 1: the prince, who was going to get a lot of

625
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 1: money from his mother's family fortune, hoped to wrap that

626
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: up and get back home to his family. He had

627
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: been away for several years at this point. He made

628
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: plans to meet his friends back in Leeds, then travel

629
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:20,239
Speaker 1: together with them to Liverpool to board the ship for

630
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:24,200
Speaker 1: New York, but he missed that meeting. His friends went

631
00:37:24,280 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: on thinking he had just extended his stay with his brother.

632
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 1: Lizzie waited in New York for her husband to return.

633
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: When he failed to appear for weeks after his planned arrival,

634
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 1: Lizzie contacted Albert by Transatlantic cable asking for information. Albert

635
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 1: responded saying that Louis had missed his first train, but

636
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: that then he had accompanied his brother to the train

637
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: station and put him on the afternoon train to Paris

638
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: on September sixteenth, and that that train had left the

639
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: station at two thirty seven pm, and that was all

640
00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: Albert knew, and no one ever saw Louis again, nobody

641
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: was ever recovered, and his cameraon projector apparatus vanished with him.

642
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: He was finally declared dead seven years after his disappearance.

643
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 1: The family searched for Le Prince in every imaginable way

644
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:18,560
Speaker 1: in the years that followed, and it really took a toll.

645
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: His father in law, Joseph Whitley, had a mental breakdown

646
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: and died in eighteen ninety one. His son Adolph died

647
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh one from a self inflicted gunshot wound,

648
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: and it's unknown if this was an accidental discharge or

649
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 1: a suicide. Lizzie not only spent a great deal of

650
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: time and money trying to find her husband, she also

651
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: fought to get his work recognized as happening before that

652
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 1: of Thomas Edison, but with little success. Yeah, there's a

653
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,280
Speaker 1: lot of characterizations as of her reading in the paper

654
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: the morning that Thomas Edison's film work was announced and

655
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:03,520
Speaker 1: feeling very uneasy and weird about the whole thing. What

656
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: happened till le Prince has been the source of speculation

657
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 1: for more than one hundred and thirty years, and the

658
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 1: theories ranged from really pretty plausible to less plausible, depending

659
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 1: on your point of view, with some verging kind of

660
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:20,399
Speaker 1: on conspiracy theory. A very common one is that Louis

661
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:23,800
Speaker 1: la Prince died by suicide in the face of financial ruin,

662
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:26,879
Speaker 1: but detractors to that theory point out that he really

663
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: seemed to be in a very hopeful place. He believed

664
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:32,600
Speaker 1: that he had truly cracked open the future of moving pictures,

665
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: and he was also set to inherit a significant sum

666
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: of money, so this didn't make a lot of sense.

667
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 1: Another theory is that his brother Albert had killed him.

668
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,439
Speaker 1: Albert had also gone through a lot in the years

669
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 1: from eighteen eighty seven to eighteen ninety. His wife had

670
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:53,759
Speaker 1: died suddenly, as had their mother, and he too was destitute.

671
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: That last visit he had with Louis was about their inheritance,

672
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:00,839
Speaker 1: of course, from their mother's estate, and people who want

673
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: to point a finger at Albert say that he was

674
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: trying to get the whole inheritance, but correspondence from his

675
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,800
Speaker 1: family to the New York La Princes all indicated that

676
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,720
Speaker 1: that visit was very cordial and amicable, and the brothers

677
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 1: were very close and on good terms. A popular theory

678
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 1: and one that Lizzie la Prince seemed to believe was

679
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 1: that Thomas Edison recognized that he had a real competitor

680
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 1: in La Prince and had him killed. Lizzie, who lived

681
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 1: until nineteen twenty five, wrote a memoir which was never

682
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,239
Speaker 1: published but which has been made available to a lot

683
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: of biographers. This is a handwritten, unedited version of her

684
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: life and her husband's, and there are some instances where

685
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:45,320
Speaker 1: it seems like she might be tying together threads that

686
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:48,879
Speaker 1: aren't quite right. For example, she stated that La Prince

687
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 1: was getting celluloid from the Lumier brothers in eighteen eighty nine,

688
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 1: but it's not clear whether they would have had access

689
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: to reels of it at that time. She makes a

690
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: case that Prince was acting strangely and secretive in New

691
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:05,840
Speaker 1: York before he left in eighteen eighty seven, and that

692
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 1: he might have been warned about Edison. There's really no

693
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 1: substantiation for that other than that it's pretty well established

694
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:18,359
Speaker 1: that Edison was cutthroat in business and kind of a jerk.

695
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: It's not he did not have a reputation for murdering

696
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: human beings. Yeah, there was what was, at least to

697
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,560
Speaker 1: me a somewhat funny development in the Edison theory in

698
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. So in two thousand and eight,

699
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:39,760
Speaker 1: the periodical Materials Today, which is a material science journal,

700
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,399
Speaker 1: had a writing competition and one of the entries into

701
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: that competition was a piece titled The Disappearance of Louis

702
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,720
Speaker 1: Le Prince, and it was written by a Tree Gupta.

703
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: This is a work of fiction, but it seemed to

704
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:56,440
Speaker 1: confuse people a little bit because the setup of the

705
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: writing is that it is a news article written about

706
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: a discovery made by a person named Alexis Bedford, who

707
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: the piece says is a graduate student at the University

708
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: of New York. And there are fake interview segments with

709
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: Bedford in this fake article in which he describes finding

710
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:16,800
Speaker 1: a book while looking through an archive collection of Thomas

711
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: Edison's papers, and in the book, which appears to be

712
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: a journal, is an entry that seems like it suggests

713
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: that Edison is confessing to involvement in the murder of

714
00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: la Prince. Because of its news article style and the

715
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,959
Speaker 1: very strong writing, it's really well written, and the fact

716
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: that it appeared in a science journal, a lot of

717
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 1: people thought this was real, even though Materials Today put

718
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,680
Speaker 1: a header at the top of the article that read

719
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 1: our writing competition winner leads us into the dark and

720
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:49,720
Speaker 1: murky past of some well known inventors of the twentieth century.

721
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:54,400
Speaker 1: So it you know how things spread like wildfire online.

722
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,320
Speaker 1: It led to a lot of new speculation, but it

723
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 1: was not a gun. It's fiction. La Prince's great great granddaughter,

724
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:07,960
Speaker 1: Laurie Snyder, was interviewed by the BBC in twenty fifteen

725
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: as part of coverage of a new documentary about La Prince,

726
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:17,239
Speaker 1: titled The First Film by filmmaker David Wilkinson. Her explanation

727
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: is the least fantastical, she told the BBC. Quote, my

728
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:25,320
Speaker 1: personal theory is pretty mundane. According to Lizzie's memoirs, the

729
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:28,439
Speaker 1: train Louis took would have arrived in Paris at about

730
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:32,239
Speaker 1: twenty three hundred. Being so late, he probably hailed a

731
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,399
Speaker 1: handsome cab to take him to his workshop. I think

732
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:38,800
Speaker 1: the driver, taking advantage of the hour and the darkness,

733
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 1: took him to a remote location near the sin, hit

734
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:43,839
Speaker 1: him over the head and threw him in the sin.

735
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 1: There were two articles from this time that suggests that

736
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 1: thieves were targeting lone travelers and La Prince was in

737
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time. She goes on

738
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:57,640
Speaker 1: to note that he deeply loved his family, so she

739
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,560
Speaker 1: did not believe that the suicide theory or the one

740
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: that he orchestrated his disappearance to dodge creditors. She also

741
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 1: dismissed the idea that Albert could have killed him as ludicrous,

742
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:12,800
Speaker 1: noting how close and loving the family was, and of Edison,

743
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:16,280
Speaker 1: she said quote, although he was certainly ruthless, he probably

744
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: had better things to do than order a hit on

745
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: a competitor. While Lizzie fought in vain to have her

746
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 1: husband recognized as a pioneer of cinema in her lifetime,

747
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:30,320
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, his work has finally gained recognition.

748
00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:34,560
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty his workshop in Leeds got a commemorative plaque,

749
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 1: and seventy years later, in two thousand and three, the

750
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 1: University of Leeds named its Cinematography and Media Center after him.

751
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 1: La Prince's daughter donated the two existing prototypes of his

752
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: cameras to London's Science and Media Museum. They are part

753
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 1: of the permanent collection there. Yeah, and they have a

754
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:56,160
Speaker 1: great online galleries of those two if you want to

755
00:44:56,160 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 1: see them. That is Louis La Prince, who's very, very

756
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: very fast, aged me. Yeah, do you also have listener mail? Yes,

757
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:07,479
Speaker 1: of course I do. This one made me laugh and laugh.

758
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: This is from our listener, Jen, who writes, hello my

759
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: favorite podcast hosts, Hi, Jen, thank you. That's so sweet,

760
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: Jen Condinius. I thought you might get a kick out

761
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 1: of this story. I'm catching up on podcasts. I don't

762
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:21,880
Speaker 1: even remember which episode I was listening to on Thursday

763
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: last week, where someone sent in pictures of some roosters

764
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: as a pet tax. Holly told her story about her

765
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:30,359
Speaker 1: attack roosters who would hide in the woods and jump

766
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: out at them. Then, on Friday, I went to a

767
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 1: farm amusement place with my four year old nanny kid,

768
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,879
Speaker 1: an actual kid, not a goat. While we were eating lunch,

769
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: this rooster snuck up behind us like a ninja, really

770
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 1: close and crowed. Scared the living daylights out of both

771
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 1: of us. He then stood there and watched us eat.

772
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: I suspect he thought my tuna salad was chicken salad. Later,

773
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 1: I witnessed him and his posse terrorizing a mom with

774
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: three young children. She had to get staff to shoot

775
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,280
Speaker 1: them away. I think he might be related to Holly's

776
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: roosters update. I've been writing this email this morning between

777
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: everything else I'm doing. I'm currently on a mini farm

778
00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 1: that has chickens. Usually they are in their coup. I

779
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:13,920
Speaker 1: did not know they were free ranging it this morning.

780
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,120
Speaker 1: I just opened the door to the car poard and

781
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: there were six chickens standing there right on the other

782
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 1: side of the door. They flapped their wings and took off.

783
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: So now I've been scared by chickens twice since listening

784
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:26,319
Speaker 1: to the podcast, and I don't think that had ever

785
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: happened before. Thanks Holly, Jen. She included a picture of

786
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: one of these roosters. Listen, I can tell you that

787
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 1: one's probably not related to mine. Mine were a barred

788
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 1: rock and a Rhode Island red and I will never

789
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 1: forget them. And they were awful and I hated them,

790
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,799
Speaker 1: and I was afraid because I was little. Keep in mind,

791
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: sure I was like seven, and when a two and

792
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: a half foot tall angry bird is coming at you

793
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 1: with talents. And also they weren't just there to scare it.

794
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: They would literally tear into people if they could. They

795
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: were awful, But I do love that Jen had benign

796
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:03,799
Speaker 1: and funny interactions with roosters, even if they scared I've

797
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: been told that some roosters are great and very sweet.

798
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: I just haven't known any. I'm sure they're out there.

799
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 1: I'm ready to meet one. If you would like to

800
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:14,960
Speaker 1: write to us and tell us about the benign but

801
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: sometimes frightening appearing animals in your life, or anything. Really,

802
00:47:20,920 --> 00:47:22,920
Speaker 1: you don't have to even send us pet pictures or

803
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,840
Speaker 1: any pictures, just whatever you want. You can do that.

804
00:47:26,200 --> 00:47:28,839
Speaker 1: That is super easy to do at History podcast at

805
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. If you want to read the show

806
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:34,920
Speaker 1: notes for today's episode or any episode, they are all

807
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 1: available at mystinhistory dot com. Just click into the episode

808
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 1: that you want information on and they'll be there in

809
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: the show notes. If you would like to subscribe to

810
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: the podcast and you haven't done that yet, it's the

811
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: easiest thing in the world. You can do that on

812
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

813
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

814
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

815
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:06,760
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.