Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince invented the first motion film in Leeds, England, that lasted 2.11 seconds long! That may not seem like a big deal now, but back then, it was quite an accomplishment.
Louis Le Prince, born on August 28, 1841, in Metz, France, grew up with his father. His father’s old friend, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, had a photography studio. Louis spent most of his childhood taking lessons relating to photography and chemistry from Daguerre. This is where Louis learned to make a Daguerrotype, an early type of photograph. After completing his lessons at the studio, he then went on to study painting in Paris and graduated at Lepzig University. In 1869 he married a talented artist named Lizzie Whitley. They both opened an art school in Britain and later had a son named Adolphe. On October 14, 1888, Louis finally succeeded in making his first silent motion film, Roundhay Garden Scene. In this film, he recorded his son, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and a friend walking around a garden in Leeds.
Eadweard Muybridge, another inventor from a decade earlier, led Louis in the direction of loving photography. Louis saw a fast motion series of 24 photographs taken by Muybridge that were played on a zoopraxiscope (Samuel, 2012). This series was introduced as Sallie
…show more content…
His film would be “recorded on Eastmen Kodak paper base photographic film from 1885 through Louis’s single-lens combi camera-projector,” (Samuel) which was patented in 1888. With the help of a wood-maker who made parts for cameras, an old assistant, and his father-in-law, he finished two cameras in October 1888 that played a series of pictures at a rate of 12-16 per second (Varma). This was a very important accomplishment for him, as it is recognized as the first, and oldest, surviving piece of film, several years before competing inventor Thomas Edison’s own motion-picture camera and