Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways is not supported by bees who make heptagon
Speaker 1: shaped hives. Instead, it's supported by the generous donations of
Speaker 1: our listeners on Patreon. Visit patreon dot com slash thinking
Speaker 1: sideways to learn more and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't
Speaker 1: understand you never know stories of things we simply don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to. Hi there, Welcome to another episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, your host, joined as always
Speaker 1: by Devin and Steve, and we're here this week to
Speaker 1: talk about another cool mystery. Yeah. This week we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about Louis La Prince who mysteriously vanished. Let
Speaker 1: me start off without few biographical details about Louis La Prince. Um.
Speaker 1: He was born in France in one moved to Leeds,
Speaker 1: England in eighteen sixty six, taking taking a job working
Speaker 1: for a college friend in a brass foundry. I think
Speaker 1: he was an engineer. Um. He eventually married, moved to
Speaker 1: the US for a while, and began experimenting with motion pictures.
Speaker 1: He was trying to build himself a movie camera. He
Speaker 1: produced a sixteen lens camera which was kind of so so. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what it did is it took sixteen sequential photographs, but
Speaker 1: didn't quite work out so great because every photograph was
Speaker 1: taken from a slightly different vantage point, so it gave
Speaker 1: kind of a jerky result. If you're trying to picture
Speaker 1: it almost looked like to figure out how to lens
Speaker 1: configuration is it's almost like the buttons on a double
Speaker 1: breasted suit. Yes, yeah, that's exactly I mean. Or you
Speaker 1: can go and look up pictures of it on the internet,
Speaker 1: because we have pictures of the machine. Yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a really accurate machine. No, that didn't. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so he he began because he didn't like the results
Speaker 1: on that when he got a patent on it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: but started, Yeah, I started working on a single lens
Speaker 1: camera and it eventually produced a prototype and also a
Speaker 1: prototype projector. And he actually is credited with making the
Speaker 1: world's first moving pictures. Yeah. That was in Leeds where
Speaker 1: he made those films in England. Yeah, Leeds, England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he tested his prototypes for moving to the US. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well no, I think this is after he came back
Speaker 1: from the US and back to Leeds and that's where
Speaker 1: he made his first films, which was and by the way,
Speaker 1: those films can be found online. They're incredibly short. Is
Speaker 1: to second, like the running what's the running horse one?
Speaker 1: That's that's not this guy? Right? Yeah? Yeah, So do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about that stuff? About that stuff
Speaker 1: before we talked about as this mysterious disappearance. You know,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about let's just go through the story
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about the technology and then we
Speaker 1: can go from there. And that's probably the better way,
Speaker 1: so we don't break it up too much. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: Generally Thomas Edison and the Louiser brothers, who are French guys,
Speaker 1: they get all the credit for the invention of the movies,
Speaker 1: but Louis Le Prince actually was the first out of
Speaker 1: the gate. He produces prototype several years I think before
Speaker 1: Edison produced his. After he had a good functioning single
Speaker 1: lens prototype and projector, he made plans to go to
Speaker 1: New York to put on a public demonstration. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so that would have been eighteen nine when that happened.
Speaker 1: So that was a year ahead of when Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: applied for his parents. Wasn't that kind of a trend
Speaker 1: in Thomas Edison's career? Was? Yeah, we're talking about that.
Speaker 1: Okay we are yeah, yeah, how can we not? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So okay, now we get talked about his disappearance. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: In September eighteen, Louis la Prince went to Dijon to
Speaker 1: visit his brother Albert. Yeah. Well yeah, he used to
Speaker 1: be great. Poupon to change Yeah yeah, dejon actually in
Speaker 1: French means dijon. I don't know if you knew that.
Speaker 1: Can we stop the mustard joke? Okay. On September six,
Speaker 1: eight nineties, brother Albert took him to the Dijon railway
Speaker 1: station and put him on a train to Paris, where
Speaker 1: Louis was supposed to meet up with friends to continue
Speaker 1: the journey to his journey to the UK and then
Speaker 1: on to America for the demonstration. Louis le Prince had
Speaker 1: his prototypes with him as well as his luggage. Long
Speaker 1: story short. When the train arrived in Paris, Louis Le
Speaker 1: Prince was not on the train and a mystery was born. Also,
Speaker 1: his long age and his prototypes were gone to None
Speaker 1: of the passengers reported seeing anything strange happening. Nobody saw
Speaker 1: somebody getting beaten or somebody getting drug off, or you know,
Speaker 1: they did, They say they noticed a dude with like
Speaker 1: really big bags. Everybody had really big luggage in those days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it appears that nobody really noticed him. Was actually an
Speaker 1: in and of itself as a little strange because he
Speaker 1: was actually a big guy. He was like six three
Speaker 1: or four, you know, he was. He was a pretty
Speaker 1: big guy. French police search to train. Then they searched
Speaker 1: the train line all the way back from Paris to Dijon,
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, quite a trip, that's quite
Speaker 1: a lot along a big swath of territory to search.
Speaker 1: They found no sign of Louis le Prince, and his
Speaker 1: disappearance is a mystery to this day. Can I ask
Speaker 1: a quick question, how soon did they search the train?
Speaker 1: I've never been able to find details. I have not either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this you know, this happened, like you know, obviously more
Speaker 1: than years ago. So details are a little sketchy. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on the telling. Though. Sometimes it almost makes
Speaker 1: it sound as if the train arrived and police immediately
Speaker 1: swarmed over the train. There's no way, but that's when
Speaker 1: you do the reading. Some of the stuff you come
Speaker 1: across gives that impression. But I don't Trains don't normally
Speaker 1: stay at the station first exactly, Paris is the end
Speaker 1: of the line, though maybe maybe it would have stayed
Speaker 1: there for a little bit. But the thing about it
Speaker 1: is is I'm not sure exactly when anybody raised the
Speaker 1: alarm about him. It might have been one of these things.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's even there's been some distortion introduced to the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and maybe railroad employees eventually searched the train,
Speaker 1: maybe the police did it. It might have been days afterwards.
Speaker 1: Even it could have been one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like maybe somebody murdered him and stuffed his body
Speaker 1: and some little nook. Yeah. But alternately, it could have
Speaker 1: been one of those things where, you know, his friends
Speaker 1: were waiting to pick him up, they didn't see him.
Speaker 1: The conductor said, you know, okay, we're all board, and
Speaker 1: somebody said, oh no, wait, wait wait, my friend was
Speaker 1: supposed to get off here. Can you just go check
Speaker 1: make sure he's not asleep? You know, they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were discovered that he was not there, and they
Speaker 1: said uh, and you know, they thought, oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: so or something. They went, yeah, and they went through
Speaker 1: the train and all that stuff, And so I don't
Speaker 1: know how thorough the search was. But but yeah, and
Speaker 1: again it's time before cell phones, so it's not exactly
Speaker 1: like you just yeah, hey, where are you and he
Speaker 1: doesn't respond and you go, oh no. But also you know,
Speaker 1: he can't just say, oh, I missed the train, I'll
Speaker 1: be on the next one, which is so you could
Speaker 1: just make the assumption of he missed the train, he'll
Speaker 1: be on the next one. Yeah. So anyway, that's our mystery.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty short intro to this one. We're
Speaker 1: going to descend right into the theory actually talk about
Speaker 1: we need to explain kind of what he's doing here
Speaker 1: based on the time frame, because this if you haven't
Speaker 1: ever done any research into the history of photography, this
Speaker 1: makes no sense in terms of how cameras worked. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys have had to do that. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're giving me looks like, well, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're asking if you've had to do any research on
Speaker 1: the history of photography. Okay, yeah, I haven't. Artist in
Speaker 1: this room. I took classes, so I know that I
Speaker 1: know that they invented the cell phone, and then they
Speaker 1: and then they invented the camera and go in and
Speaker 1: then they invented the selfie and then they invented the internet.
Speaker 1: Okay somewhere in there. Yeah, that's what I know. Well,
Speaker 1: so I know that this is part of Louise's history,
Speaker 1: is that he was his family friends with Because if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard, you may have heard of the phrase
Speaker 1: a Dagara type, and that's a type of photographic image.
Speaker 1: That means a Daguera type is a very it's a
Speaker 1: very simple way of making a photo. You basically take
Speaker 1: polished silver a plate and you put chemicals on it.
Speaker 1: They're light sensitive. You expose it like you would a film,
Speaker 1: you know, photographic film. It's the same principle, but it's
Speaker 1: chemicals on a plate, and then you process it and
Speaker 1: then you put a sheeted glass over because what has
Speaker 1: been exposed, Um, I can't remember whether it's what's been
Speaker 1: exposed stays dark or if what hasn't been an exposed
Speaker 1: washes away. One of the two, it leaves an image,
Speaker 1: and that's a Dagara type, and you'll see him. There's
Speaker 1: all these old tin photos of like Confederate soldiers and
Speaker 1: stuff like that that's there. They're a version of that.
Speaker 1: But he Liew of the Prince, was family friends. That
Speaker 1: that was a buddy of his dad. So I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time hanging out with him and learned
Speaker 1: a lot and got him I'm sure that got him
Speaker 1: started off. Yeah, so he so he knew about games
Speaker 1: from that. And then the other guy that you brought
Speaker 1: was Moybridge. And people will know Moybridge that they probably
Speaker 1: won't know. His work is if you've ever seen I
Speaker 1: think it's a horse galloping is the name of it.
Speaker 1: But it is a series of images that they put
Speaker 1: in a spirograph that they caught. Not a spirograph when
Speaker 1: it's a cylinder with images on the inside and you
Speaker 1: can spin it and it makes it look like the
Speaker 1: images moving. It's a very early crude version of actual movies.
Speaker 1: It's actually it's it's actually the earliest gift, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it repeats well yeah, And that's what Devil was talking about,
Speaker 1: is he took these images of a horse that was running,
Speaker 1: but he didn't actually make a movie. It was like
Speaker 1: it was stop motion photography, is what it was. He had.
Speaker 1: There was a bet to figure out if a horse's
Speaker 1: feet ever all four left the ground at once, so
Speaker 1: to be able to figure this out, and needed a photograph,
Speaker 1: so he had I think it was sixteen or twenty eight,
Speaker 1: something like that, sixteen cameras in a row. Threads run
Speaker 1: across the course that pulled the shutter, so as the
Speaker 1: horse crossed it and snapped the thread, it would take photo.
Speaker 1: And then he assembled those and that's how you get
Speaker 1: the actual first movie. If the horse had gone galloping
Speaker 1: down the course and all the cameras had toppled over,
Speaker 1: maybe that happened the first time out. He's like, should
Speaker 1: not have used rope. But the point is is that
Speaker 1: uh La Prince wasn't the first one to invent this
Speaker 1: kind of technology. People have been working on this, while
Speaker 1: Boybridge is the first one who proved that you could
Speaker 1: make a moving image. And then from there everybody else.
Speaker 1: This was the age of you know, the gentleman inventor.
Speaker 1: Everybody was making these things the renaissance, Yes, the renaissance man.
Speaker 1: But that's that's how this whole technology worked. And that's
Speaker 1: what his sixteen lens camera was was the equivalent of
Speaker 1: in one box with Moybridge had done with sixteen individual cameras. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course he was shooting on papers, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't as good. He's the one who figured out how
Speaker 1: to use celluloid. Yeah, he did, and to make an
Speaker 1: image he started. Yeah, he would take sheets of celluloid
Speaker 1: and cut it in strips and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: which is why the movies are so short. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. The interesting thing about this too is that
Speaker 1: eventually Thomas Edison basically owned the movie industry and it
Speaker 1: was all run out of Mental Park, New Jersey, and
Speaker 1: he formed a formed a company. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: the company was called, but they essentially set the rules
Speaker 1: for filmmaking and the theaters. They one of the things
Speaker 1: that they insisted on was that no movie be longer
Speaker 1: than twenty minutes, because they were of the opinion that
Speaker 1: the attention span of the American public was too short
Speaker 1: for anything. That I would kind of agree with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing we've gotten away with the length we've gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's got that. But but he had a kind
Speaker 1: of a stranglehold everybody had. Everybody had to pay him
Speaker 1: royalties because he sewed up the whole thing with those
Speaker 1: patents and everything. And so that's why Hollywood got created.
Speaker 1: It is because of Thomas Edison. Because all these people
Speaker 1: from the East Coast were fed up with him, you know,
Speaker 1: setting the rules, making it, making them pay royalties whenever
Speaker 1: they wanted to show a film in the theater, and
Speaker 1: and telling them how long their movies could be etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So they moved That's California, which is in nine, which
Speaker 1: is as far away from Edison as they could possibly get,
Speaker 1: and the reigning the reigning court out there was a
Speaker 1: ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and so the Ninth Circuit
Speaker 1: was not particularly sympathetic to monopolies such as what Edison
Speaker 1: had going. Oh he was trying. He tried to set
Speaker 1: a monopolies constantly. Oh yeah, I mean, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about it. But he was a complete and total
Speaker 1: a whole everything that I've I mean, he did great things,
Speaker 1: but he was also a dirty businessman. Oh yeah, very much.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, and yeah, and then the whole story
Speaker 1: of him and Tesla is kind of interesting. It so
Speaker 1: Lawrence a lot of reading. If you've never done that,
Speaker 1: you need to. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah yeah. But
Speaker 1: that was a big there was a big war, you know,
Speaker 1: over the whole thing between direct current and alternating current,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh yeah, and Tesla invented alternating current. Alternately,
Speaker 1: you can watch the Bob's Burgers episode topsy. Yeah, could
Speaker 1: you imagine how screwed up our infrastructure would be if
Speaker 1: we had direct current? It would be different. It would
Speaker 1: be terrible. Be better, no, direct curric better. You are
Speaker 1: quoting at You're quoting a cartoon. I'm not saying it'd
Speaker 1: be no, I'm personally saying it'd be better. I'm not
Speaker 1: quoting power plants every five miles or ten miles because
Speaker 1: that's all you can transmit electricity. Yeah, oh yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be a great. Yeah, just right at the arcs right,
Speaker 1: you just have an arcing in between things. Just have
Speaker 1: tesla coils every perfect Yeah, we can just generate power
Speaker 1: in our own homes. I have no sor. I'm working
Speaker 1: on a small nuclear reactor myself. Back to Louis the Prince. Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about theories as to how and why
Speaker 1: he disappeared. Okay, first theory up, Thomas Edison did it?
Speaker 1: I believe it. Yeah I don't actually yeah no, Actually,
Speaker 1: the like the Prince's widow, believe that Edison was responsible
Speaker 1: for a little foul play. I could see why though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he had he actually did have an interest in
Speaker 1: this whole thing. He applied for his first moving picture
Speaker 1: patent a year later in after the disappearance, After the disappearance, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in France, the louis Are brothers staged their first moving
Speaker 1: picture show in Paris. In so it does appear that
Speaker 1: these people, especially Edison, really benefited from Louis the Prince's disappearance.
Speaker 1: And now, um, let me ask about the patent thing,
Speaker 1: because I never I could never find conclusive answers to this.
Speaker 1: As you read that the Prince applied for a patent
Speaker 1: for the single lens camera in the United States and
Speaker 1: it was denied, and then two years later Edison applies
Speaker 1: for it and gets it without a hitch, and they denied.
Speaker 1: According to the readings that I've seen, it was denied
Speaker 1: because it infringed on another patent. Yeah. But but but
Speaker 1: Edison's design infringed on the same path. Correct. But but
Speaker 1: is there truth to that or do you know? I
Speaker 1: couldn't find out if that was true or not. I
Speaker 1: have not been able to fit to find that out
Speaker 1: for a certain book. Didn't Edison? Didn't? Edisone work in
Speaker 1: the patent office for a while. No, that's Einstein. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but famous guy. Wrong, famous guy. You sort of wonder
Speaker 1: when it comes to Edison though, if you maybe didn't
Speaker 1: have a didn't have a like a mole in the
Speaker 1: patent office. Yeah, patents like mad though, that's the thing
Speaker 1: he filed so through what's the what was the name
Speaker 1: of the place that he had Edison mean Menlo Park,
Speaker 1: Menlo Park, thank you? Through Menlo Park. He filed for
Speaker 1: bunches and bunches and bunches of patents. So I I
Speaker 1: almost wonder if his patent went through because somebody went
Speaker 1: another Edison patents stay up go. Yeah, that could be
Speaker 1: or I think it could be too, because it might
Speaker 1: be one of those deleos where you kind of got
Speaker 1: to like bribe somebody. Yeah yeah, I mean that was
Speaker 1: this was a time where that was not uncommon. Yeah country. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Edison gets his patent and louis La Prince
Speaker 1: does not. But I was I was saying Edison really
Speaker 1: benefited from the Prince's disappearance, and the family felt like
Speaker 1: Edison and Louisier's were taking credit for louis La Prince's invention,
Speaker 1: but apparently they couldn't sue. I read in one place
Speaker 1: that only Louis la Prince could take legal action into
Speaker 1: American law about anything we're regarding patent infringement, and so
Speaker 1: the family could have taken legal action if Louis was dead,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't legally considered dead. He took like seven
Speaker 1: years and then he was declared I think he was
Speaker 1: declared legally dead in eighteen seven. Yeah, it's too late.
Speaker 1: I mean they're often running and so yeah, uh so
Speaker 1: on the way, years went by, and this is fairly recently,
Speaker 1: like we're talking, like you know, probably ten or so
Speaker 1: years ago. A guy named Alexis Bedford was a grad
Speaker 1: student at New York University, and he was doing research
Speaker 1: into the history of motion pictures. And he was in
Speaker 1: the archives in the New York Public Library researching Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison's work, and he found this warn leather book, which
Speaker 1: turned out to be one of Edison's notebooks, which I
Speaker 1: assume he had lots of. Yeah, And in this book
Speaker 1: he he found a note dated September eight nine in
Speaker 1: Edison's handwriting, which read quote Eric called me today from Dijon.
Speaker 1: It has been done, Princess, no more. This is good news.
Speaker 1: But I flinched when he told me murder is not
Speaker 1: my thing. I'm an inventor and my inventions for moving
Speaker 1: images can move forward unquote. So Alexis Bedford took that
Speaker 1: journal back to New York University UH and gave it
Speaker 1: to a story in their named Robert E. Meyer for authentication.
Speaker 1: And this guy Meyer examined the journal that included handwriting
Speaker 1: comparisons and some sort of computer tomography scan or a
Speaker 1: cat scan UH, and he decided the journal was real.
Speaker 1: The note dated September eighteen ninety was in Edison's handwriting,
Speaker 1: so it was a real deal. It was a smoking gun,
Speaker 1: Thomas A. Edison crime king. At this point there was
Speaker 1: another a similar mysterious disappearance of another inventor who Addison Edison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a while later. Yeah, in nineteen thirteen. Rudolph
Speaker 1: Diesel disappeared in September nineteen thirteen. He boarded the Steamer
Speaker 1: Dresden in Antwerp, Belgium, down for the UK, and that
Speaker 1: was September September UH and the day of he uh disappeared.
Speaker 1: Apparently the next day he was supposed to show up
Speaker 1: at breakfast and he didn't, so they wouldn't check his cabin.
Speaker 1: The bunk had not been slept in. He was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. They searched the ship, couldn't find him.
Speaker 1: And they looked at his journal and the last entry,
Speaker 1: which was September twenty nine, was nothing more than a cross.
Speaker 1: And the cross looks suspiciously just like one that Edison
Speaker 1: would have drawn. Was Edison on the ship? Edison was
Speaker 1: not on the ship, but you don't know that his
Speaker 1: agents weren't. So for anybody who hasn't picked up on
Speaker 1: it yet, though, Joe, why why is this guy important? Diesel?
Speaker 1: Rudolph Diesel. He invented the diesel engine. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that obviously is you know, the diesel engine is a
Speaker 1: real big deal. Yeah, that's an okay deal. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal. Yeah, drives like half the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's since Yeah, ships and trucks and trains and how
Speaker 1: am I God, Yeah, there's diesels all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eleven days after Rudolph Diesel disappeared, to ship ran across
Speaker 1: a body in the general area. And they didn't really
Speaker 1: actually feel like dragging the body on board their ships.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but they did get into it,
Speaker 1: and they especially lowered a boat went over rifle. The
Speaker 1: pockets took some personal effects, and in the end it
Speaker 1: turned out the personal effects were diesels. I bet there's
Speaker 1: some superstition that goes on there. There might be. I
Speaker 1: don't really want to bring a dead body onto a ship. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is eleven days later, so the body was probably
Speaker 1: kind of ripe. Yeah. And also it's totally possible that
Speaker 1: they didn't know by then, Right, what where was he
Speaker 1: going on the ship? He was going from Antwerp to
Speaker 1: the UK. Oh, so they after a visit to the
Speaker 1: U S. Right, got it, Yeah, so he was going
Speaker 1: to US. It's possible they would have not known yet
Speaker 1: that somebody was missing. But well, yeah, they just saw
Speaker 1: a body. They want they want to get some identifying
Speaker 1: things off of it, you know, and then they just
Speaker 1: let it go. So Diesel died in So Diesel died.
Speaker 1: So said, you had another guy with a connection to
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison, you know, mysteriously dies Yeah, so Thomas Edison. Uh, Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: that the whole story about the journal from the New
Speaker 1: York Public Library, it kind of has a stink of
Speaker 1: BS all over it. I think, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you guys think. Well, based on the legwork you did,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna agree. Yeah. Well, yeah, I called New York University.
Speaker 1: They've never heard of this historian named Robert E. Meyer,
Speaker 1: and uh, I asked him. I said, well, what if
Speaker 1: he used to work for you, but it doesn't anymore,
Speaker 1: And they said, well, you know, if you worked for us,
Speaker 1: if he was on our faculty, he would have published stuff.
Speaker 1: And so if you do an Internet search, that stuff
Speaker 1: will turn up. And it didn't not. And I had
Speaker 1: done those searches and none of that stuff turned up.
Speaker 1: This guy, as far as I could tell him, never existed,
Speaker 1: which means likely this journal ever existed. Yeah, exactly. But
Speaker 1: well and frankly it's it doesn't really pass the smell test.
Speaker 1: If it did, who does that? Yeah, oh yeah, murdered
Speaker 1: somebody I know really Uh. And as for as for
Speaker 1: Rudolph Diesel, I don't think Addison actually had any interest
Speaker 1: in developing a diesel engine. Apparently that was one of
Speaker 1: one of Diesel's disappointments as he tried to tried to
Speaker 1: spark some interest for that in America and apparently because
Speaker 1: of diesel engine is more efficient. Uh. He thought, well,
Speaker 1: who could not want this? Right, but also didn't I mean,
Speaker 1: the diesel engine was already a thing right when Diesel died. No,
Speaker 1: gasoline powered engines were a thing, but not Diesel, because
Speaker 1: Diesel invented the diesel That's what I mean. By the
Speaker 1: time Diesel died, Yeah, he he had invented hadn't been widespread,
Speaker 1: but he had invented it all. He probably already had
Speaker 1: the patent for it, I presume, since it's called the
Speaker 1: diesel engine. Here's the weird thing about patents is they're
Speaker 1: not They're not international there by country typically, which is
Speaker 1: the screwious system in the world. Well, it seems it
Speaker 1: was enough that he I mean, it's named after Diesel.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it seems like even if Edison had
Speaker 1: been interested in it before Diesel had already made a
Speaker 1: name for himself. Everybody already knew, Hey, this guy is
Speaker 1: the thing, the one who did this. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: never stopped I mean Edison. If Edison was truly interested
Speaker 1: in the engine, he could have patented it in the
Speaker 1: United States, because he did things like that, where he
Speaker 1: would get the patent, somebody else would fight him and
Speaker 1: say they own the patent. He would then say, oh,
Speaker 1: let's be business partners. He'd bring him in as a
Speaker 1: business partner, then biohim out, and then that person disappeared
Speaker 1: from history. And Edison was the guy who made the invention,
Speaker 1: so he did a lot of ininky things. But I
Speaker 1: want to actually want to say that even though I
Speaker 1: don't think that this journal existed, I think that the
Speaker 1: way that you read it and you interpret it may
Speaker 1: be incorrect, and it may have just been if it
Speaker 1: really existed, an innocent note because if you read, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is four days after the Prince disappeared, right, okay,
Speaker 1: So it says and I went back to it, and
Speaker 1: it says Eric called me today from Dijon. It has
Speaker 1: been done, Princes no more. So it has been done.
Speaker 1: Could mean something about the fight is done. Maybe got that,
Speaker 1: and you know the good news is this is good news.
Speaker 1: But I flinched. Murder is not my thing, like he's
Speaker 1: o God, he died, Like killing a man is not
Speaker 1: my thing, Like it's crazy that he died. You can
Speaker 1: read into it a completely different way. It still implicates
Speaker 1: him because La Prince was never seen or heard from again,
Speaker 1: nor was his stuff, So at the very least that
Speaker 1: implies that Edison knew that La Prince is dead. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It does. The guy said he was murdered.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy doesn't know squad. The guy that
Speaker 1: calls him four days later, it's probably in the local papers,
Speaker 1: local inventor or you know, French inventor disappears, man hunt underplay.
Speaker 1: I don't think what you're saying. So this guy calls
Speaker 1: and says, hey, La Prince disappeared. Somebody killed it. He's gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but still, yeah, I could see that. But but here's
Speaker 1: the deal is Louis la Prince at this point has
Speaker 1: been missing a grand total of four days, and so
Speaker 1: there's no reason to assume he's been murdered. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I got the Christie disappeared for how many days
Speaker 1: and people said she had been murdered right away. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I just I think that whole thing was just made up.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. But I also see how it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be as um necessarily. I see what you're saying. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's like he didn't have a part in the murder.
Speaker 1: He just heard he was murder. It's like, yeah, cool
Speaker 1: that that frees up. Yeah, it wasn't being the evil
Speaker 1: monster that we've called him. This whole time. A little
Speaker 1: bit though, because he said it was good news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't a nice guy.
Speaker 1: That it doesn't matter. I don't think anyway, I don't think.
Speaker 1: Back back to Diesel, I just gotta say, interest in
Speaker 1: the diesel engine at that time was just kind of
Speaker 1: minimal because we were Americans and we weren't really interested
Speaker 1: in the war efficient engine. Yeah. Also, Rudolph Diesel was
Speaker 1: having financial and health problems, and it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of assumed at this point in time that he
Speaker 1: committed suicide. But of course, at that time there were
Speaker 1: some conspiracy theories about the whole thing, one of which
Speaker 1: involved the German Secrets Service, who rubbed him out, supposedly
Speaker 1: because they were developing their U boats using diesel engines
Speaker 1: and they didn't want Rudolph Diesel sharing his secrets with
Speaker 1: the British and the Americans. And that is a year
Speaker 1: before the outbreak of World War One? Is that correct?
Speaker 1: It is when World War One started? Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: can see why that theory would be out there for him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another theory was that business rivals did him in
Speaker 1: uh get Another theory that was in the papers about
Speaker 1: less than the year after his death said that he
Speaker 1: had he had faked his death and was living in
Speaker 1: Canada under a new name. Did you add this part? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I made up the new name. But his new name
Speaker 1: was Friedrich Gasoline. Uh yeah, so yeah, I was I
Speaker 1: was kind of hoping that that was what was in
Speaker 1: the newspapers at the time. Yeah, so Frederick Gasoline is
Speaker 1: living in Canada anyway. So whether Edison actually stole Louis
Speaker 1: the Prince's ideas, I can't really say. It might be
Speaker 1: a case of parallel developments, so they just both kind
Speaker 1: of had the same idea, which is entirely possible. Or
Speaker 1: maybe Edison had a source down the patent office who
Speaker 1: gave him information and drawings on patent applications, and so
Speaker 1: Louis the Prince applies gets turned down and then that
Speaker 1: stuff turned winds up in in Edison's mailbox days later,
Speaker 1: and so you can get to work on his single
Speaker 1: lens camera. Yeah. I think I think that for Edison
Speaker 1: it was just lucky timing. Yeah, it probably mean. I
Speaker 1: think it's not as though it happened in a vacuum either, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can be the very clear progression from
Speaker 1: each step to each step, So it makes sense that
Speaker 1: they would have come to the theme similar conclusions. But
Speaker 1: what I mean is that if if la Prince hadn't disappeared,
Speaker 1: he probably would have been able to show it worked
Speaker 1: and get his patents, and then Edison wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: the stranglehold on the whole thing. Yeah, but it was
Speaker 1: it was just all he might have been America. Still,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was perfect timing for him.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, well I kind of had some stuff
Speaker 1: going on. Let's just oh well, let's just see what
Speaker 1: I can make out of based on what we know
Speaker 1: about this guy's stuff, and bang, you know, back reverse
Speaker 1: engineering it. Yeah, it could have been Okay, enough, I
Speaker 1: have enough of Edison, I'm thinkings and probably didn't do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: next there. This is a popular one to suicide, UM
Speaker 1: has claimed. According to Louis la Prince's great nephew whose
Speaker 1: name I don't know, what he said, apparently he was
Speaker 1: on the verge of bankruptcy and that so he decided
Speaker 1: to commit suicide and decided to do it in one
Speaker 1: of those wonderful perfect ways that creates a mystery arranging
Speaker 1: for his body and his luggage to never be found.
Speaker 1: That's weird. Well I don't find it. I find it convincing. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because really that never that doesn't happen. It doesn't that
Speaker 1: can happen. If I was going to commit suicide, I'd
Speaker 1: probably do it that way, but in some perfect mysterious way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing about it is is he had this
Speaker 1: cool prototype that he was going to take to New
Speaker 1: York to show off, and um, he had a lot
Speaker 1: to live for, I think because it could have turned
Speaker 1: out that that thing could have taken the world by
Speaker 1: fire and he could have gotten very rich. Probably would have,
Speaker 1: probably would have. And if you take the New York
Speaker 1: and it turns out it's to flop, well then you
Speaker 1: kill yourself. Sure what if I mean, okay, so just
Speaker 1: to play you know, the flip side of the coin
Speaker 1: here for a second. What if it turns out that
Speaker 1: his cooling prototype didn't actually work as well? White? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, it worked for a little bit and then
Speaker 1: he found some fatal flaw in it or it broke,
Speaker 1: and so he was on his way, but he was thinking,
Speaker 1: there's literally no way I can fix this. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's wrong with it. The Cavin Boy dropped it
Speaker 1: and or you know, there's literally no way to I
Speaker 1: can't figure out how to make it more than two seconds.
Speaker 1: You know, people are obviously going to want to record
Speaker 1: more than just two seconds. Well, I can't figure out
Speaker 1: how to make it more than two seconds. I'm a failure.
Speaker 1: Oh god, how am I going to debut this in
Speaker 1: New York? I have to kill myself before anybody finds
Speaker 1: out about my failure to take my stuff with me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got a feeling because you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a guy like like him, you've got to go
Speaker 1: to a lot of iterations and failures and and modifications.
Speaker 1: You know. I think he was probably if that had happened,
Speaker 1: he probably would have postponed the showing. And he had
Speaker 1: done before. I'm just saying, I'm just wasn't like this
Speaker 1: was his first rodeo. Yeah. Yeah, and uh. And the
Speaker 1: other reason I don't like to suicide theory because he
Speaker 1: was almost bankrupt, is that his mom had died recently,
Speaker 1: Lee and he was actually going to inherit some money.
Speaker 1: So he killed himself because his mom died. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: He was depressed. He was really depressed about his mom dying. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so much for that there. How do you guys feel
Speaker 1: about suicide? Yeah, I don't. I don't think so. Our
Speaker 1: next series that he was murdered for money. Uh. Did
Speaker 1: I happen to mention that Louis the Prince was getting
Speaker 1: an inheritance? Yeah? I think I did. Yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: number that I've heard is that his mother left about
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty dollars to her children, which in
Speaker 1: today's dollars is about three point seven million dollars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the theory this, the theory on this and this
Speaker 1: one is that Louise's brother decided to increase his own
Speaker 1: share by killing him. And after all, his Louis the
Speaker 1: Prince's brother was actually the only person who saw Louis
Speaker 1: the Prince get on that train, and that's true, so
Speaker 1: maybe he never got on the train to begin with.
Speaker 1: How many children were there? You know, I've not been
Speaker 1: able to find that out. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: is it like three or seventeen? Do you have a
Speaker 1: general on those days? I think it's a smaller number.
Speaker 1: In those days people had like yeah, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was probably four or five something like that at
Speaker 1: the most. That's still a sizeable sum of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and see why his brother would knock him off for that. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's just that that was real money back in those days.
Speaker 1: It's still real money. I don't know about you. I
Speaker 1: was labor rendering, you know, I was thinking we were
Speaker 1: all kind of in the same boat about three point
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars being a lot of money. No, I'm
Speaker 1: saying I had dollars. It's not it's not real money. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's still real money to me. Yeah. Sorry, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1: Over there, that one point six billion dollar payout in Powerball,
Speaker 1: I kind of spoiled me. I get get interested in
Speaker 1: a jack produ that's less than a billion dollars now, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know about this theory that his
Speaker 1: brother murdered him. You know, if Louis the Prince hadn't
Speaker 1: no doubt he was down there in Dijon talking to
Speaker 1: his brother and showing him his cool prototype and displaying
Speaker 1: this amazing thing that's going to take the world by storm.
Speaker 1: If I would his brother, I'll be thinking, Wow, holy crap,
Speaker 1: my brother might get stinking rich off of this, and
Speaker 1: maybe he's gonna spread the wealth around a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's that that kind of so that
Speaker 1: kind of contradicts a suicide thing for me. Plus I've
Speaker 1: heard that the samon was actually close and they weren't
Speaker 1: the kind of go around stabbing stabbing each other in
Speaker 1: the back and stuff like that. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's also a situation where an accident could have happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the brother is the only one that
Speaker 1: that is the link to him getting on the train,
Speaker 1: then that's the link that I would question the most.
Speaker 1: He's out of his property, he falls down and hits
Speaker 1: his head on a rock. His brother is covered in
Speaker 1: blood from it and looks bad, looks bad, so he
Speaker 1: just buries him in his camera in a shallow grave,
Speaker 1: actually had a deep grave. Shallow graves get dug up
Speaker 1: by animals, he would have been found well, he would
Speaker 1: have put the camera on top, so the animals would
Speaker 1: have you know, taken pictures of themselves. And that was
Speaker 1: it selfie, the first animal selfie every But you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's quite possible that it wasn't an
Speaker 1: intentional thing, that it was just an accident. And so
Speaker 1: Louis went swimming in the lake and he sort of
Speaker 1: didn't come back. He was but he was big, wasn't he.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was guy. It's not easy feat to have,
Speaker 1: you know. It could have been he died like not
Speaker 1: it died in an embarrassing way, like you know, auto
Speaker 1: erotic a situation, or maybe maybe maybe he you know,
Speaker 1: like shot up with smack and overdosed. You know, something
Speaker 1: like that is embarrassing and like you're making jokes about it.
Speaker 1: But there there could be things that were considered an
Speaker 1: embarrassment to the family in the way that he died
Speaker 1: and they decided to hide that. That's that's so far
Speaker 1: the most plausible of all of the things that we've
Speaker 1: talked about. But here's why I don't think that happened
Speaker 1: is because he um, he had a couple of really
Speaker 1: valuable prototypes right there. So when your brother dies and
Speaker 1: he just had to cover it up, if could just
Speaker 1: say something like, well, he left, but he left these
Speaker 1: with us. He wanted us to ship them onto him
Speaker 1: in New York because he didn't want to be wigged down.
Speaker 1: Because you're not going to throw those things away. Those
Speaker 1: things are valuable. Joe, you're the evil genius. That's why
Speaker 1: you think of these things could be the people who
Speaker 1: clubbed their family member with the brick. Never think about
Speaker 1: that stuff. That's not an accident. It is when you
Speaker 1: wink wink clubbed him with it. It's it's totally next. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's times when it's times when you've got
Speaker 1: a sock and you've got a brick in and you
Speaker 1: just sort of swinging it around and sometimes you accidentally
Speaker 1: connect with somebody. I'm gonna start just skyping into the
Speaker 1: because that makes me very uncomfortable. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: you guys, how accidents happened? Yeah? Alright, so yeah, so murder.
Speaker 1: I'm not really keen on that theory. What do you
Speaker 1: guys like guys like that or not? No, I don't
Speaker 1: think I don't think. Okay, next the same with this one.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's out there now. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But his family this one says he disappeared voluntarily because
Speaker 1: his family were not really voluntarily, but his family basically
Speaker 1: told him to get lost and disappeared because he was gay.
Speaker 1: That there's somebody out there puts out. This series says
Speaker 1: he disappeared lived out the rest of his life in Chicago.
Speaker 1: I don't know why Chicago. I guess because there's a
Speaker 1: thriving gay gay community there. It was one of the
Speaker 1: places that he probably didn't know anyone. Okay, that would
Speaker 1: be a good reason. Well yeah, that so he had
Speaker 1: been probably like he didn't know who in Japan either,
Speaker 1: so like that would have made sense. Yeah, yeah, uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's financial problems, but also he was gay and so
Speaker 1: the family wanted him gone because he was an embarrassment.
Speaker 1: And there was a reporter who put this story out,
Speaker 1: Leo Salas, who I assumes French. Uh. He says that
Speaker 1: little Prince died in Chicago, in which tells me that
Speaker 1: somebody should check the death records in Chicago and be
Speaker 1: on the lookout for French Sunday names like Louis La King,
Speaker 1: Louis La Queen. Um. But I gotta say that evidence
Speaker 1: that Louis Le Prince was gay it is really kind
Speaker 1: of thin. Yeah, I shouldn't say then it's non existent.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I know. Okay, so much for that theory.
Speaker 1: Another theory he got off the train somewhere else. It's
Speaker 1: actually quite a way from Paris to Dijon, and how
Speaker 1: long have a ride was that? Do you know? Ballpark
Speaker 1: had a couple of days. No, it wasn't a day.
Speaker 1: It was not a couple of days, it was hours. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. So's presumably that train stopped in other cities between,
Speaker 1: because there's plenty of towns in between, right, hard to
Speaker 1: imagine it wouldn't. So he could have gotten off the
Speaker 1: trains somewhere else. And maybe he just went off to
Speaker 1: start a new life. I might have shacked up with
Speaker 1: Dorothy Arnold. Uh Or maybe he stepped out onto the
Speaker 1: platform just to get a breath of fresh air and
Speaker 1: then the Louis Air Brothers jumped him. I mean, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Those guys are vicious. Yeah damn. Then, uh so you're
Speaker 1: not looking that theory either. Okay, fine, all right, fine,
Speaker 1: let's move on to our last theory, which is that
Speaker 1: he was the victim of a random mugging in Paris. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Louis the Prince's great great granddaughter and whose named Laurie
Speaker 1: Snyder wrote a little thing in revealing that the friends
Speaker 1: who were supposed to meet him at the train station
Speaker 1: in Paris didn't actually meet him at the station. Apparently
Speaker 1: they were supposed to meet up elsewhere. Uh So the
Speaker 1: train arrived at a round eleven pm and I looked
Speaker 1: at an almanac and it was dark at that time
Speaker 1: at that day. Well good, I'm glad, thank you for
Speaker 1: looking that up, because you know, it really the question question,
Speaker 1: you know, say, well did you check to see if
Speaker 1: it was dark? Man? Right? I called somebody in Paris
Speaker 1: and they said, what are you doing? Why are you
Speaker 1: calling me? They just babbled a bunch of nonsense. Anyway, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: back to so it was dark. His granddaughter Laurie thinks
Speaker 1: he was probably robbed and killed and his body thrown
Speaker 1: in the river. It's according to her, she found two
Speaker 1: news articles from around that period of the time that
Speaker 1: said that thieves in Paris were targeting lone travelers, which
Speaker 1: Louis le Prince was. It's another but I just I
Speaker 1: guess for me. Again, the two things are, he was
Speaker 1: a pretty big guy, so again, you don't necessarily target
Speaker 1: If a train got in at eleven in Paris, there
Speaker 1: were probably a lot of other, probably a lot of better, smaller,
Speaker 1: easier targets that were getting off at the same time.
Speaker 1: On top of that, his stuff never showed up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, Well it wouldn't necessarily, is it. The Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd have thrown at the not all of it though.
Speaker 1: I'm not even just talking about the camera and the projector.
Speaker 1: I mean he had other stuff with uggage. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one would assume that at some point something would have
Speaker 1: shown up, right, not necessarily, there's there's this thing called
Speaker 1: a dumpster. Think about it. Okay, So he shows up
Speaker 1: him eleven o'clock at night. He shows up and he's
Speaker 1: got this big camera and projector set up that he's
Speaker 1: got to carry, and he's got a bag. So it's
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock. He's tired. He's walking down the street. And
Speaker 1: it's not like people just you know, run up to
Speaker 1: their mark and hit him. They follow him briefly. And
Speaker 1: he's tall, he's tired. He's tall, yeah, but he's tired.
Speaker 1: He's kind of sluggish. He's run up behind him and
Speaker 1: club him in the back of the head. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: and he could. And he goes down, and you beat
Speaker 1: the crap out of him, throw him in the sin,
Speaker 1: take everything home, realize that this box that he had
Speaker 1: there's nothing valuable in it. But hey, it's cold, I
Speaker 1: need to light a fire, so I throw the box
Speaker 1: in the fireplace to heat my house. And then you
Speaker 1: go through his stuff and you get rid of it
Speaker 1: like and you know, you fence everything you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very plausible, and it's more so than you know,
Speaker 1: other than the swinging a brick in a suck part.
Speaker 1: I think it's totally plausible. Yeah, I think most likely
Speaker 1: what happened is he um, this is what this is
Speaker 1: what Laurie says in her art Gloria Snyder, is that
Speaker 1: he probably caught a cab, which is in those days,
Speaker 1: of course, would have been a horse drawn carriage. Handsome, handsome,
Speaker 1: not a handsome. Yeah, probably kind of handsome, and maybe
Speaker 1: the driver was less than scrupulous and just took him
Speaker 1: down somewhere by the sin and and said, hey, by
Speaker 1: the way, dump and then toss the body, you know,
Speaker 1: took the wall and all that, throw the body and
Speaker 1: the ever and the and then just went on his
Speaker 1: way and went through the stuff later on. So that's
Speaker 1: that's that's plausible. She also said a few other things
Speaker 1: in her article. She said that Louis of the Prince
Speaker 1: loved his family. He would never leave them by suicide
Speaker 1: or by disappearing himself and starting away. And and she
Speaker 1: knows all this from apparently from family records and apparently
Speaker 1: her great great grandma wants his name. Lizzie. Louise's wife
Speaker 1: wrote a wrote some sort of memoirs, and she also
Speaker 1: believes the theory that his brother murdered him for money
Speaker 1: is ridiculous for the same reason uh and and asked
Speaker 1: for the gay thing and the family forced him to leave.
Speaker 1: She says, the family actually spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: and money trying to find him after he disappeared, So
Speaker 1: you know, that doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it was, we're only going to use volunteers, I
Speaker 1: could see how people could say, well, they didn't really
Speaker 1: out of pocket, but they did spend money. They did, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did. And so obviously if they knew that he
Speaker 1: had disappeared because he was gay in YadA YadA, then
Speaker 1: why would bothers his brother had killed him. Yeah, then
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have spent the money because they know they're
Speaker 1: wasting money. Brother accidentally killed him and didn't say anything
Speaker 1: that could be Yeah, this is why you don't swing
Speaker 1: socks with bricks in him in the house. Next week, Joe,
Speaker 1: you hold the sock. I gotta get a brick. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. I I'm all out of bricks. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had the last one that I had. I had to
Speaker 1: go throw in the river. I'm not gonna tell you why. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: where are we at here? So just a little a
Speaker 1: few afterthoughts here in Thomas Edison brought a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: the American Mutoscope Company. Edison claimed that he was a
Speaker 1: soul in ven cinematography, and so he was demanding royalties
Speaker 1: from Mutoscope. They were I don't know what they were
Speaker 1: doing making movies or yeah, and they were infringing according
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, I know, he owed them money. So
Speaker 1: Louis La Prince's son Adolph testified for the defense. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was not allowed to show the court his father's
Speaker 1: cameras unfortunately, and Edison won the lawsuit. You know, was
Speaker 1: that the family was actually really really upset about that
Speaker 1: whole thing because they expected to be able to make
Speaker 1: a case because their idea was, this will get recognition
Speaker 1: to dad for what dad invented, and instead the defense
Speaker 1: put him up on the stand, let him do a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then took him away and they both
Speaker 1: just badgered, both the defense and the prosecution just badgered
Speaker 1: the crap out of him. Yeah and so yeah, so
Speaker 1: poor the poor guy. He was pretty young at that
Speaker 1: time too. I think he was only around twenty or so.
Speaker 1: He was a little bit older than that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a young guy. Yeah. Uh. Two years later,
Speaker 1: Adolph was found shot to death on Fire Island in
Speaker 1: New York, another victim of Thomas Edison. One man crying
Speaker 1: wave and on the other hand, uh, Adolph was bird hunting,
Speaker 1: so it could have possibly been a hunting accident. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. That's why they have those safety vests today.
Speaker 1: Then they had bird vest then, Yeah, so the dogs sparked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, I don't know how this happened,
Speaker 1: Paris police found a photo in their archives of a
Speaker 1: drowned man who had been dry and right from the sun,
Speaker 1: and apparently he resembled Louis the Prince. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: some John Doe. Then they I don't know why they
Speaker 1: were going through the archives, but they found and sure
Speaker 1: they do sometimes. Yeah, so I think that lends a
Speaker 1: little bit of credence to the mugging theory. I know
Speaker 1: what you guys think. Yeah, I would, Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: give it credence based on that. So we've talked about before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I still don't like, I don't know why. I
Speaker 1: guess that it's you know, it's that thing where he
Speaker 1: was such a prominent figure and it doesn't sit well
Speaker 1: to me to have him meet such a kind of
Speaker 1: simple Yeah, you know that you lost this beautiful piece
Speaker 1: of technology that was really the first of its kind
Speaker 1: just because somebody hit him over the head like a
Speaker 1: couple all pence or whatever. You know. It's that's the
Speaker 1: thing that gets me about that. I know that's another
Speaker 1: reason I hate criminals really well, it's yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's why I have such a hard time. Even
Speaker 1: though I think my logical brain says, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: probably just mugged, the rest of me is like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it had to have been Edison because it's the only
Speaker 1: thing that makes sense, because it's the only thing that
Speaker 1: gives any validity to his inventorship. It's not quite so
Speaker 1: random and absurd. You know. I know, I know what
Speaker 1: you're saying, but but I agree. I think it's probably
Speaker 1: just Yeah, I don't I don't think that was really
Speaker 1: Edison's emo. I think Edison's way was just to buy
Speaker 1: people out, yeah, steal their stuff or buy them out. Well,
Speaker 1: and he I think that the pinnacle of Edison's dirty
Speaker 1: tactics were with Tesla, and that's only because Tesla, I think,
Speaker 1: in Edison's mind betrayed him because he left, yeah, and
Speaker 1: pursued what he wanted. And I think that's why he
Speaker 1: went to the extent to all the things that he
Speaker 1: did to show that a C was such a bad thing.
Speaker 1: But I don't think Edison did it. But I still
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to say that either he was mugged and
Speaker 1: killed or possibly something happened at his brothers. I still
Speaker 1: waver between those two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Again, I'm not
Speaker 1: liking the brother and dying at the brothers thing, just
Speaker 1: because you know, those those prototypes were potentially valuable and
Speaker 1: so anyway, that's why I'm thinking just a random mugging
Speaker 1: or Thomas Edison. Now he wasn't jerk, you know. He
Speaker 1: just to prove that a C was bad. He electrocuted
Speaker 1: dogs and stuff like that. But the elephant and yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, and though he didn't initially come up with
Speaker 1: the idea because of his stuff at Menlo Park, the
Speaker 1: first electric electric here was created. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: in that same time period, So I mean he did
Speaker 1: he did all kinds of not good things. And I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you I don't believe direct current is all
Speaker 1: that safe either. Really. Oh, no, elect City at large
Speaker 1: is not. Yeah, yeah, I can really. Let me think
Speaker 1: about the stories I told you guys. When I tried
Speaker 1: to replace the outlet in my house, Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: dumber it. Yeah, use a fork instead of a screwdriver.
Speaker 1: I used a screwdriver properly, and I still shocked myself.
Speaker 1: How you got to be careful with that stuff? You know,
Speaker 1: I tell you kids, this is my thing. Don't don't.
Speaker 1: Don't just go shut off the circuit breaker, go shut
Speaker 1: off the power met into the house. When you start
Speaker 1: to do that stuff, just go detach the transformer because
Speaker 1: for the whole block. Actually, no, don't detach it because
Speaker 1: you you have to climb up and and you might
Speaker 1: fall and hurt yourself. Just shoot it a couple of times,
Speaker 1: use your arrows from your go and just shoot it
Speaker 1: a couple of times. You'll be fine. Okay. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess that's it for this week and another compelling mystery.
Speaker 1: I hope you liked it. Um. You probably want to
Speaker 1: know how you can get a hold of us and
Speaker 1: send us emails telling us telling us how awesome we are.
Speaker 1: Uh so. That email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. You can find us on Facebook, like us,
Speaker 1: follow us, join the group. You find us on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We are Thinking Sideways without the g streaming. You can
Speaker 1: stream us just about anywhere, and of course iTunes. You
Speaker 1: can find us on iTunes all the time that you
Speaker 1: can subscribe, leave us a review, hopefully a nice one.
Speaker 1: We appreciate that. And last of all, our website, it
Speaker 1: is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, where you can download
Speaker 1: the episodes, you can look at the links. We always
Speaker 1: post a few of those, and you can leave comments,
Speaker 1: preferably nice comments. That's about it. Oh wait wait, I
Speaker 1: forgot We've got a subreddit. How could I leave that out?
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy. Yeah, okay. Then of course you can
Speaker 1: find us on Patreon and Patreon patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. That's if you feel like pledging money to
Speaker 1: help support the podcast, It's all always appreciated. Lots of
Speaker 1: you have. We We really do appreciate that. In voluntary
Speaker 1: in Patron's recurring basis thing. If it's easier for you
Speaker 1: to do a one time thing, we've got the PayPal
Speaker 1: and then we've got merchandise available and we've added new
Speaker 1: merch so there's new merch there that people can get.
Speaker 1: New merch you can buy. I think it sideways are fifteen.
Speaker 1: No you can't, you can't that that will happen. We alright, well,
Speaker 1: having all alright that, when are we done? Now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it stops working. I was so nervous about it. All right,
Speaker 1: So I guess that's it for this week. Hey for
Speaker 1: the thoughts, that's all right, well taught everybody, bie guys