Louis Le Prince filmed moving pictures in 1888, vanished from a train in 1890, and his son died after testifying against Edison

Louis Le Prince, a Frenchman working in Leeds, received a US patent on 10 January 1888 for a 16-lens camera and projector, with matching patents in Britain and France. In October 1888 he filmed a few seconds of his son Adolphe and in-laws walking in the Whitleys' garden at Roundhay, Leeds. In September 1890 he planned to show his invention in New York, where his wife Lizzie and their five children waited. On 16 September his brother Albert left him at Dijon station for the Paris train. He never arrived. No body or luggage was found. Lizzie believed Thomas Edison was behind it. No evidence ties Edison to the disappearance. While Le Prince was only missing, the family could not take control of his patents to contest Edison's. They waited seven years for a declaration of death, granted in 1897. Adolphe took a year off from Columbia University to gather evidence. He testified for the American Mutoscope Company in its patent case against Edison, using his grandmother's 1888 death certificate to date the Roundhay film before Edison's Kinetoscope. The company won, and the ruling was overturned a year later. In 1901 Adolphe was found shot dead on Fire Island, New York, aged 29. In 2003 a photograph of a man drowned in 1890 was found in the Paris police archives. He resembles Le Prince but was shorter.