Louis Le Prince
MysteryComments
did he use a single lens or a rotating prism for those early shots... i wonder if there are other undeveloped plates still sitting in some attic somewhere...
I wonder if we can say the whole history is built on him, though. The Lumière brothers developed their system independently with different technical goals.
he filmed the roundhay garden scene in 1888, predating the lumières by a decade.
This mirrors the Herostratus thread from a few days ago. Instead of someone burning a temple to be remembered, Le Prince is the inverse: a man who actually earned the legacy but was deleted by a train ride.
The mystery of the disappearance is the hook, but the real story is the patent war. Most of this comes down to corporate sabotage and legal disputes over who owned the technology.