837
lenses (illustrating the most diffi cult proposition, incor-
porating 16 lenses). The patent was granted in January
1888, but the U.S. Patent Offi ce deleted claims for ma-
chines with one or two lenses as having been already
covered by others. His patents in Britain, France, and
elsewhere, however, allowed a one-lens version.
In Paris, in 1887, to demonstrate proof of working he
produced a 16-lens machine. Although this was designed
to use two picture bands moving alternately, the only sur-
viving sequence is a single set of 16 images, suggesting
that the tests may have been made with a fi xed plate.
Back in Leeds Le Prince rented a workshop at 160
Woodhouse Lane and engaged woodworker Frederick
Mason and J.W. Longley, inventor of an automatic ticket
machine, and by the summer of 1888 had constructed
a “receiver” (camera), with a single lens and intermit-
tently-moving take-up spool. The patent suggests the
use of gelatine coated with bromide emulsion, or “any
convenient ready-made acting paper, such as Eastman’s
paper fi lm,” the “stripping fi lm” which had recently been
made available in the fi rst Kodak amateur rollfi lm camera.
A paper negative sequence of the family cavorting for
Le Prince’s camera was exposed in his father-in-law’s
garden, apparently as early as October 1888. Scenes
of his son Adolphe playing the melodion, and of traffi c
on Leeds Bridge, were taken at about the same time, at
between twelve and twenty pictures per second.
Projection was more of a problem, due to the unsuit-
ability of the paper base and the registration diffi culties
with unperforated bands. Undeterred, Le Prince built a
“deliverer” (projector), having three lenses and three
picture belts and apparently using a Maltese cross inter-
mittent movement. This machine probably used belts of
glass slides, the fi bre belts moving alternately to ensure
that an image was always on the screen, thereby reduc-
ing fl icker. A single-lens projector was also built. These
machines did not succeed to Le Prince’s satisfaction, and
he probably experimented with celluloid which offered
a more suitable image base, in 1889/1890.
Also attempting to produce motion pictures in Eng-
land at about this time were William Friese-Greene,
with his associates Mortimer Evans (1889 patent) and
later Frederick Varley (1890 patent); and Wordsworth
Donisthorpe and William Carr Crofts (1889 patent).
They all had some success in shooting sequences of
photographs on fl exible fi lms, but like Le Prince, had
serious problems with projection and were unable to
present successful motion pictures to the public. In
France, Etienne-Jules Marey had also produced se-
quence photographs on both paper and celluloid strips,
but was mostly concerned with motion analysis—ex-
amining the individual images—rather than recreating
movement on the screen. (Though he would later build
a projector for his unperforated fi lmstrips, but it was
never demonstrated).
While Le Prince was experimenting in Leeds, his
wife and family remained in New York, having rented
and renovated a mansion in preparation for showing his
apparatus and motion pictures. Apparently troubled by
fi nancial problems, in the summer of 1890 he packed
up his equipment in Leeds ready for the move to New
York, and in August went to France with friends. He
left them at Bourges to visit his brother Albert at Dijon,
where he was last seen boarding the train for Paris on
16 September, and subsequently disappeared. In 2003,
an 1890 photograph of a drowned man resembling Le
Prince was discovered in the Paris police archives.
Stephen HerbertBiography
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, was born in Metz,
France, on 28 August 1841. His father Louis Le Prince
was an army major; his mother was Elizabeth Boulabert.
Le Prince spent much of his life in Leeds, England, with
occasional business ventures in the United States. He
took sequence pictures on paper “fi lm,” but was appar-
ently unable to achieve successful projection. According
to his employee Frederick Mason, Le Prince—Gus to
his family—was most generous and considerate and,
although an inventor, of an extremely placid disposi-
tion which nothing seemed to ruffl e. Seven years after
his 1890 disappearance, Le Prince was declared legally
assumed dead.
See also: Friese-Greene, William; and Donisthorpe,
Wordsworth.Further Reading
Scott, E. Kilburn, “The Pioneer Work of Le Prince in Kin-
ematography,” in The Photographic Journal, August 1923,
373–378.
Scott, E. Kilburn, “Career of L.A.A. LePrince” (from SMPE
Journal July
1931) reprinted in Fielding, Raymond (ed.), A Technological
History of Motion Pictures, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967, 76–83.
Rawlence, Christopher, The Missing Reel: The Untold Story of the
Lost Inventor of Moving Pictures, London: Collins, 1990.LE SECQ, HENRI (JEAN-LOUIS HENRI
LE SECQ DES TOURNELLES)
(1818–1882)
French photographer and painter
Henri Le Secq was born in Paris on August 18, 1818
to Auguste-Jean-Catherine Le Secq and Anne-Louise-
Françoise “Dolly” Tournaire. Le Secq’s father served as
the chief clerk at the Prefecture of the Seine and eventu-
ally became mayor of the ninth arrondissement (today