Le Prince devoted most of his adult life to inventing a camera that could capture motion and project it. He had high hopes for his invention, telling his children it would change the world. He imagined people from all over being able to see what other countries and exotic animals looked like. He also thought it would be great to capture loved ones before they died. Le Prince did everything right as far as filing patents, but his lawyers changed something on one of them without letting him know because the patent office wouldn't approve it.
Le Prince's oldest son, Adolphe, was in Europe helping his father with his camera when they shot what is considered the oldest motion picture in existence in October of 1888: Adolphe, Le Prince's in-laws, and a family friend moving around a garden. The timing was fortuitous: Le Prince's mother in law would pass away just a few weeks later, thereby firmly cementing the date of the film.
Adolphe went back to New York to his mother and siblings. Le Prince continued to refine his machine. In September of 1890 he went to Dijon to visit his brother Albert. He supposedly got on a train to Paris, but he never arrived. It took weeks before anyone realized Le Prince was missing, and by that time the trail had grown cold. His body was never found.
Here's where it gets even worse: because he wasn't officially dead and couldn't be declared dead until he'd been missing for 7 years, his family could do nothing to enforce his patents since they were in his name only. His family watched by in horror as Thomas Edison took all the credit for "inventing" motion pictures and made a fortune off of it. There was nothing they could do: even once they had Le Prince declared dead, Edison was too rich and too powerful. Adolphe ended up committing suicide because he felt like he had failed his father.
His family believed Edison had something to do with Le Prince's mysterious disappearance, but Fischer actually had a really plausible theory. I don't want to spoil it, but it makes more sense that thinking Edison did away with his rival. That wasn't really Edison's modus operandi--he sued rivals and bankrupted them or bought them out. Edison did not come across as a very nice man in this book, and I'm sure he probably wasn't, but I'm also pretty sure he didn't have anyone killed. What happened to the Le Prince family was heartbreaking. I'm glad he's finally getting the recognition he deserved as the real inventor of the motion picture camera.
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