9. Louis Le Prince was the true inventor of the motion picture camera, two years before Edison
Louis Le Prince was an artist in France who experimented with a single lens motion picture camera, using a strip of paper based film, and successfully filmed moving picture segments in Leeds, England in October of 1888. Edison did not begin filming until 1890, using celluloid film. Le Prince’s work with moving pictures predated Edison’s by several years, as did that of several other pioneers of motion pictures, including William Friese-Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe. After capturing moving images on film Le Prince began work on a projector in 1889, demonstrating it privately to family and friends, but by 1890 he had not yet demonstrated his work in public. In September 1890, Le Prince embarked on a journey intended to first take him to England, where he would publicly display his invention, followed by trip to the United States for the same purpose.
Le Prince visited a brother in Dijon, departing that city on September 16 for Paris. His brother saw him off at the Dijon station, but friends awaiting him in Paris never saw him get off the train. Somewhere between Dijon and Paris Le Prince vanished from the train, which was an express. Nor was his luggage on the train when it arrived in Paris. French police and Scotland Yard investigated the disappearance, and his family hired additional investigators, but no trace of Le Prince was found. Among the theories which were put forward were murder over patents (implicating Edison), a faked suicide for financial reasons, a real suicide pre-planned by Le Prince, and a murder committed by his brother, the only person to report having seen Le Prince board the train at Dijon. In 1897, after years of searching and disproven theories, Le Prince was officially declared dead. By the end of the twentieth century his preceding Thomas Edison in developing a working motion picture camera and projector was recognized by the film industry.