Louis Le Prince was on his way to New York to demonstrate his amazing "moving photographs" invention when he boarded a train and was never seen again. His luggage and his body were never found.

ROUNDHAY GARDEN SCENE (1888) runs two seconds. Four people walk around a garden in Leeds. One of them walks backwards. It is the earliest motion picture known to history.

The sequence was shot on October 14, 1888 - two years before Le Prince's disappearance - using a single-lens camera of his own design. His system preceded the inventions of Edison and the Lumières by years.

Le Prince's widow and son Adolphe were certain that Thomas Edison was behind Le Prince's disappearance.

In 1898, Adolphe appeared in court in a case brought by Edison against a competitor, attempting to establish Le Prince's prior claim. He was not allowed to present his father's cameras as evidence.

In 1902, Adolphe Le Prince was found shot dead in a field on Fire Island. The death was ruled a suicide.

More than a century later, a police archive was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man who may have been Louis Le Prince. No one has ever confirmed it.