The Missing Reel: The Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of Moving Pictures

Why did a pioneering inventor of the movie camera vanish without trace on the eve of his success? In September 1890 the French inventor Augustine Le Prince boarded a train in Dijon, France, for Paris. For three years he had struggled to perfect a motion picture camera and projector in his Leeds workshop. Now he was on his way home to New York to present the world debut of moving pictures. But Le Prince never reached Paris; and in New York his wife Lizzie waited in vain. He was never seen again. Instead of Le Prince's triumph, it was Thomas A.Edison who claimed first place in the race for one of the most lucrative technological discoveries of all time.