© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved
Louis Le Prince: the body of evidence
If Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince is known at all within screen studies today, it is usually for his mysterious disappearance - just as it seems he was ready to reveal his "invention" of moving pictures. This article provides the first scholarly examination of the evidence to show precisely what he had achieved at the time of his death. It concludes that Le Prince had indeed succeeded making pictures move at least seven years before the Lumière brothers and Thomas Edison, and so suggests a re-writing of the history of early cinema.
The article begins with a synopsis of Le Prince's life and work, the culmination of which was his moving pictures of traffic on Leeds Bridge, England, in 1888. The bulk of the analysis, however, comprises a detailed study of the documentary evidence (including the Le Prince papers, which are still in private hands in the United States), together with the physical evidence (including his surviving cameras and images). Particular attention is given to the importance of celluloid and projection, together with what can be learned from modern re-animations of Le Prince's surviving work.
Finally, the article uses the study of Le Prince to question the underlying assumptions behind the concept of invention and the primacy debate. In this way, it locates Le Prince not only within the history of the cinema, but also the history of cinema within the philosophy and public understanding of science.