- [Narrator] Over a hundred years ago,
a famed French inventor named Louis Le Prince
made a breakthrough.
He created the very first moving picture camera.
But just days before he could showcase
his new design to the masses,
the man vanished without a trace.
But how?
What could possibly explain the sudden disappearance
of Louis Le Prince?
Let's find out in today's episode of--
- [Announcer] Colossal Mysteries.
- [Narrator] Louis Le Prince was a French artist
and inventor who worked on creating
some of the world's first moving picture cameras.
Today, Le Prince is recognized
as the father of cinematography
for being the first person to shoot moving pictures on film.
And yet, three years later,
when Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers
revealed their own machine for playing movies,
no one had heard of Louis Le Prince
or his earlier invention.
That's because in 1890,
Louis Le Prince vanished without a trace
while on a trip to New York City,
where he planned to show off his new movie-making device.
For the first leg of his journey,
Le Prince intended to travel
from the city of Dijon to Paris.
He arranged for a ticket on September 16th.
He said goodbye to his brother at the station
and left with his original films and patents
safely in his luggage.
But when his train arrived at the station in Paris,
Le Prince's friends discovered he was not onboard.
At first, his friends just assumed he'd missed his train
and would catch the next one.
But sadly, Louis Le Prince would never be seen
by his friends or family again.
Over the next few days and weeks after his disappearance,
French police, Scotland Yard,
and a group of his own friends and family
searched far and wide,
but no one found a trace of him whatsoever.
This strange case was never solved.
And to this day, people still wonder
what happened to Louis Le Prince.
In the century since his disappearance,
two main theories have developed.
The first theory is that Le Prince made himself disappear.
There are those who believed
that the inventor was just on the brink of bankruptcy
and he orchestrated his disappearance
as a way to avoid his debts without ever being found.
The second theory is much more salacious.
You see, there are those who believe
that Louis Le Prince may have been assassinated
and that a certain world-famous inventor
may have been involved: the one and only Thomas Edison.
In his book called The Missing Reel,
author and director Christopher Rawlence
suggests that at the time of the vanishing,
Le Prince was about to official patent
his brand-new movie-making device in England.
We already know that he went on his fateful New York trip
to officially exhibit his hot new machine for the world.
Could it be possible that Edison took some extreme measures
to make sure his competitor didn't beat him to market?
No solid evidence has ever proven a connection
between Edison and Le Prince's disappearance.
But to this day, there are still those who wonder.
Edison filed his patent for a brand new movie camera
about a year after Le Prince vanished.
And while Edison had no problem stealing ideas
throughout his career,
it's just as likely that his team developed their own camera
without resorting to such grim tactics.
And yet, the mysterious story doesn't end there.
Just eight years after his father's disappearance,
Louis's eldest son, Adolphe Le Prince, testified in court
claiming that his father had invented
the moving picture camera before Edison.
But strangely, just two years after testifying,
Adolphe Le Prince was found dead
from a gunshot wound while duck hunting near New York.
There were no witnesses.
So, what happened to poor Louis Le Prince that night?
Did he really disappear into thin air?
Or could there be something even more sinister afoot?
To this day, no one can say for sure what happened.
And until this strange disappearance is solved,
it's up to each and every one of us
to decide what we believe.