Louis Le Prince — Film Inventor Boards Train in France, Never Arrives, Body Never Found

On September 16, 1890, Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince — the French-born inventor who created the first moving picture films and the camera to record them — boarded a train in Dijon, France bound for Paris. He was never seen again. Neither his body nor his luggage was ever found. Le Prince had made the world's first motion picture films in Leeds, England, in 1888 — two years before Thomas Edison's kinetoscope. His Roundhay Garden Scene, shot in October 1888, is recognized as the oldest surviving motion picture. He was preparing to travel to New York to publicly demonstrate his invention and patent it when he vanished. His disappearance came at an extraordinarily convenient moment for Thomas Edison, who was racing to claim priority for the invention of the motion picture camera. After Le Prince's disappearance, Edison was able to proceed largely unchallenged. When Le Prince's son Adolphe later attempted to testify in patent litigation about his father's priority, he was found shot dead in 1902. Despite an investigation by French authorities, no explanation was found for the disappearance. Le Prince's packed luggage should have been found on the train or platform, but it also vanished. Theories include suicide, accident, murder by Edison's agents, and disappearance to escape financial or personal problems. The case was investigated again in 2003 when a French archives photograph was found showing a man resembling Le Prince in a 1890 police photo of a drowning victim.