Louis Le Prince, The Father of Cinematography

In any casual conversation regarding the history of film, the name of Louis Le Prince seldom arises. Yet, this legendary French artist and inventor stands out as perhaps the most important figure in the history of filmmaking. Le Prince was the man responsible for the very first recording of motion images on film. It was recorded one October day in 1888 in the garden of Oakwood Grange in Roundhay, Leeds. The recording, which is barely 2 seconds long, captures a scene in which Le Prince’s wife, his son and his parents-in-law are seen walking merrily around in circles in the garden. Louis Le Prince was born in Metz, in 1842. As a young boy, Le Prince often visited the studio of his father’s friend, Louis Daguerre, one of the pioneers of photography, from which he may have received his first lessons. Later, he studied painting in Paris and then post-graduated in chemistry at Leipzig University. Le Prince moved to Leeds in 1866, and started working for John Whitley, a friend from college who owned a firm that made brass valves and components. Le Prince fell in love with Whitley’s sister Elizabeth, who was a talented artist herself, and got married three years later. Together they opened the School of Applied Art and became well renowned for their work in fixing colored photographs on to metal and pottery. Their portraits of Queen Victoria and Prime Minister William Gladstone were placed in a time capsule in the foundation stone of Cleopatra's Needle in London. Louis Le Prince During this time Le Prince began interested in ‘moving’ photograph and designed a camera with as many as 16 lenses that took as many pictures by firing the 16 independent shutters in sequence. This was the first invention he patented.