[This entry is a continuation of Le Prince 16-lens process.]

By the late 1880s, several inventors in Europe, Britain and the United States, inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s achievement in recording movement and reproducing it on-screen, albeit in a simplified graphical form, attempted to devise their own moving-picture devices, with varying degrees of success. 

Having constructed his 16-lens camera in 1887, in Paris, and dealt with the legal matters following his mother’s death, Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince returned to Leeds. The town offered him the engineering expertise, and access to his father-in-law’s foundry, that would facilitate his planned technological developments and, he hoped, a quick return to his family in New York. Le Prince rented a workshop and engaged a joiner, Frederic Mason, and a mechanic, James Longley, in the construction of a new camera employing a single “taking lens” and just one roll of film. The paper negative and stripping negative films then available were too short for his purposes, so several films were spliced together and trimmed – in darkness, broken only by the dim glow of a red safelight – to a width of 60mm to fit the camera.

Le Prince’s camera was remarkably close in form to later film cameras. Hand-cranked, it employed a basic intermittent mechanism and a film gate with a rotating shutter behind the lens. His earliest shots were taken with this camera in the garden of the Whitley family, at Roundhay near Leeds. One, taken on October 14, 1888 – possibly the first “family movie” – shows Joseph and Sarah Whitley (Le Prince’s parents-in-law), Le Prince’s eldest son Adolphe (1872–1901), and a family friend, Annie Hartley. It can be dated precisely, as Miss Hartley mentioned the occasion in a condolence letter to Elizabeth Le Prince following Mrs. Whitley’s death on October 24, 1888. Adolphe also appears in another shot, dancing around while playing an accordion (melodeon).

Later that month, Le Prince took his camera into Leeds to film traffic passing across Leeds Bridge from an upper window of a nearby ironmonger’s premises. All earlier examples of recorded movement were of set-up subjects, so this was probably the World’s first “actuality” film. Adolphe stated that it was over 200 ft (61m) long and taken at 20 fps: a running time of around 55 seconds. (Le Prince, 1899)

The films we see today are reconstructed from copy negatives made by the Science Museum, London, in 1931, of vintage contact prints showing up to 20 frames from each of the original negatives. In 1997, this writer, along with Paul Thompson of the then National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, collaborated with Jean-Dominique Lajoux of the Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, Paris, to animate those fragments, creating a record of the earliest motion pictures made with a film camera. (Howells, 1997, pp. 190–1)

By coincidence, the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) exhibited a roll of pictures taken with his recently constructed Chronophotographe camera at a meeting of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, on October 29, 1888. Thus, the two Frenchmen were the first to capture motion pictures in succession on a single roll of film. As an inventor, Le Prince, wary of rivals gaining knowledge of his inventions, kept his achievements secret, while Marey, a scientist, freely disclosed his.

Le Prince’s later efforts were mostly concentrated on devising ways to project his films. The transparent film bases he used to print on – such as gelatin, collodion and, latterly, Eastman Transparent Film (available in the UK from early 1890) – would readily warp, or catch fire, under the heat produced by any projecting light source. To overcome this problem, Le Prince devised a water screen, inserted between the light and the film gate. Rather than printing his films in long lengths – itself a challenge – he printed individual frames, which were then fitted between sprocketed ribbons, or into slots in the projectors he constructed.

James Longley recalled making a 16-lens projector based on Le Prince’s patent, one with a single lens and another employing three lenses, which he “considered" a perfect one, it being very simple in construction, and gave the pictures without blurs” (Longley, 1899). Le Prince also tried a variety of illumination sources with the help of electricians, one of whom, Ernest Kilburn Scott (1868–1941), went on to champion the inventor’s work, from the 1920s onwards.

By 1890, work on the 16-lens projector had reached the stage where “we had got the machine perfect for delivering the pictures on the screen” (Longley, 1898). Le Prince made plans to return, with all his equipment, to his home in New York, where he hoped to arrange for a public demonstration. Prior to leaving for America, he visited France with his bank manager friend, Richard Wilson, and his wife. Near the end of their holiday, Le Prince journeyed alone to see his brother Albert in Dijon, arranging to meet up with the Wilsons in Paris on September 16. But he never arrived, and no trace of him was ever found. Various theories about his disappearance are explored in some detail in biographies by Christopher Rawlence (1990) and Paul Fischer (2022).

Le Prince’s disappearance had long-lasting and profound effects on his family. In due course, they asked Wilson to oversee the clearance of his workshop. “Much of the apparatus was sold for what it would bring or melted as scrap,” wrote Adolphe – there were debts to be paid. Wilson reserved what he thought were “some of the important parts” for the family. Frederic Mason “picked up a few relics” and later regretted that he, “did not secure some exposed films and the drawings… That they might have historical importance was not appreciated.” (Mason, 1931; Scott, 1931: p 64)

Could the history of film have been different, had Le Prince made it back to New York? His process was still imperfect, the projection method cumbersome – hardly ready for commercial exploitation. He had recognized that the new celluloid film entering the market could be the technology to make moving pictures viable – a couple more years of work, and he could, maybe, have perfected his process.

Forty years after his death, Le Prince’s daughter Marie travelled from America to attend the unveiling, on December 12, 1930, of a memorial plaque to her father at the site of his workshop in Leeds, organized by E. Kilburn Scott. She brought over Le Prince’s cameras and other items which she deposited with the Science Museum, London. This collection is now housed at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, just 11 miles from where Le Prince lived and worked.