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The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies
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64/99
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8/99
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95/99
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About This Book
One of the New York Times Best True Crime of 2022 A "spellbinding, thriller-like" ( Shelf Awareness ) history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious, forgotten man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy. The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his "taker" or "receiver" device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history. In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince's rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history—until now. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and presents a "passionate, detailed defense of Louis Le Prince…unfurled with all the cliffhangers and red herrings of a scripted melodrama" ( The New York Times Book Review ). This "fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative" ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review) presents the never-before-told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince's disappearance.
Reviews
"Fischer also gives his narrative the flavour of a whodunit, with chapters entitled 'The Crime' and 'A Gun that Kills Nothing'."
"Fischer's book also successfully chronicles the history of photography and explores how moving pictures were the next logical step—and how several inventors were in competition to get there first ..."
"The author paints a full portrait of Le Prince ..."
"Those two aims don't always jibe, particularly when his more poetic flights of prose come up against the granular realities of R&D ..."
"With a spellbinding, thriller-like presentation supported by painstaking research, Fischer puts forth evidence to try to unravel the mystery of Le Prince's life and death."
"the book's real strength is not its crime-solving (Fischer concludes with a plausible if not provable suspect); it's the way Fischer, who is also a film producer, helps us see how revelatory motion pictures were at the time."
"Fischer's adept character sketches bring to life dozens of people who played a role in the creation of motion pictures and help reveal the cutthroat world inhabited by late 19th-century inventors ..."
"Though Fischer's ultimate conclusion about the circumstances behind Le Prince's death remains speculative, he offers and defends a plausible version of events that draws persuasively on extant historical evidence ..."
"an astonishing real-life whodunit ..."
"what Fischer does do is bring sharp forensic skills and a cool head to a narrative that has become hijacked by wild conspiracy theories ..."
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