November 26, 2025 • 53 mins
The man who invented the movie camera got on a train in France in 1890 and was never seen again. The wife of Louis Le Prince thought she knew who’d ordered her husband’s disappearance and presumed murder - Thomas Alva Edison.
Many people were simultaneously racing to develop moving pictures - so had Edison decided to bump off his closest rival so he could win? The story of who deserves the credit for the movies is a murky one - involving bitter betrayal, courtroom drama and soft-core porn.
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Pushkin too quick.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
No, it's perfect push kid stop you got it.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Robert Smith. We're starting this one with a little true crime.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oh I love it, Bring me back.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
It's the fall of eighteen ninety and there's a guy
named Louis Le Prince. He's French, and he's about to
show the world that he has invented the movies moving pictures.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Love it.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
He's spent about a decade at this point developing a
camera slash projector. Almost went broke a couple times, but
finally now he has it. He has done it. He's
built a camera, he has filmed the first movie ever made,
and he's going to go to New York to show
the world. He's going to have the premiere of all premiers,
the very first of one, Yes, the premier premiere number one.
(01:21):
But first he decides he's going to go visit his brother,
his brother who lives in as you say, Dijon, this
is the frenchest story up here in France. Yes, I
think he does have a mustache. Also, from there, he's
going to go Jon Paris, Paris, London, London. New York
couldn't go direct at that time, and so he goes
to visit his brother, spends a few days there, and
then on September sixteenth, eighteen ninety Louis la Prince, the
(01:45):
man who invented movies, gets on the train from Dijon
to Paris. He has never seen again. He disappears. His
wife at that time was living in New York, his wife, Lizzie,
and you know, she's waiting for him to show up.
But at that time people are late. Things happen, but
she starts to get nervous, and her nervousness turns into panic.
(02:08):
She starts going down to the battery, down to the
southern tip of Manhattan every day, watch the ships come in,
and you know, see if she can see him come
off the ship. Nothing. And so she's contacting her family
back in England. She's contacting his brother in France. Nobody
knows anything. He's gone. And then on May twenty eighth,
(02:31):
eighteen ninety one, this is less than a year after
he disappeared, Lizzie sees this headline on the front page
of the New York Sun. Why don't you give it
to us?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I read it to us. The kinetograph Edison's latest and
most surprising device, pure motion recorded and reproduced.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Lizzie reads this headline and she thinks to herself, I mean,
I know what happened. It's obvious what happened. Thomas Edison
chilled my husband and stole his idea. Jacques. I'm Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And I'm Robert Smith. And this is Business History, a
show about the history of business.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well smug, well smug in the Raid Today.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I'm proud of the show. This is our third and
final episode about Thomas Edison. In the first episode, we
talked about how Edison invented this whole new way of
inventing things. Second episode, he brings electricity to the world,
but also manages to screw it up a little and
bet on the wrong horse. And today we talk about
(03:32):
Edison's last big success, the movies, the motion pictures.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Kind of the key theme that the sort of big
idea in the show today is simultaneous invention, you know,
the sort of classic invention story. And this was like
say true of Edison in the Phonograph. Is one guy
or one team just coming up with this idea that
nobody saw coming, making this huge breakthrough out on their own.
But that's unusual, right A lot of the time, maybe
(03:59):
most of the time, big breakthroughs are not like that.
There are all these different teams and everybody knows that
a breakthrough is coming, and everybody is racing, working on
different techniques to get to the same place. And it's
really interesting to look at the story and think, well,
in that setting, who wins, who loses and why? And
in particular, in this case, it's the story of how
(04:21):
Edison does not invent the movies but still wins.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's also about a murder.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
There was a murder in the show today, allegedly. I mean,
I definitely died.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, that's true. That's true, and he would have by now.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Oh yeah, yes, they're all dead. Now, so let's pick
up the Edison story. We're going to pick it up
in eighteen eighty seven when Edison has just turned forty.
He's forty years old, and he moves his lab from
Menlo Park to West Orange.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
The Wizard of West Orange. Actually that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
It's not bad. But he's still the Wizard of Menlo Park,
but now he has a much bigger and better lab.
You know, you remember from the first episode.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
He had everything in one place, in one room essentially, yes,
and so now he is an international celebrity with backing
from the most powerful and rich financiers in the world.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
And this new lab reflects that actually lab isn't even
a big enough for it. It's a compound, right, So
he builds like a factory where they're making phonographs, you know,
the record players and the records to go on them.
And then the lab is this like super lab, multi
stories high. There's a machine shop, and then the sort
of heart of it is the lab, right, and now
(05:30):
Edison can buy everything. He buys every metal in existence, apparently,
of course, thousands of dollars of chemicals. And then I
found I found this one list that I guess it's
just like the plant and animal products they bought, and
I love it. We read it, read it.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
For I picture this wall, and we're reading the things
along the wall, right, hog bristles, porcupine quills, tanned walrus hide,
because you don't want the raw.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Right skins of every known animal, every known animal. It's
like Noah's arc.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
A pound of peacock tails, a dozen bulls hordes just
in case eleven is enough a do and walrus tusk's
twenty five pounds of marlin the fish.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Marlin's for eating, Like I wonder twenty five pounds a
mile is after snacking or for inventing.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's the whole thing in Edison's mind. You never knew
that there was going to be some solution and some
guy's gonna say, Marlin, we got Marlin.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I mean, so right, So there's a few ways I'm
thinking about this, but like the simple one is he
wants to be able to invent everything all the time. Yeah,
and that's kind of what he's doing at this point.
He's got hundreds of workers and he's assigning all different
people to all different projects all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
But still at the age of forty, like it's been
a while since Edison has like had a big hit
kind of yeah, right, I mean he moved to Menlo
Park in the late what eighteen seventies and came out
the phonograph right away, right like right away, Everyone's like,
this is magic, right, light bulb. Everyone knows about this.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Now he's working on lots of different things. He's been
He's trying to invent iron mining. That's actually what he's
really into at this point. He's bought an iron mine
and he's built this four milling plant, and he loves
to go out there and get dirty. He's actually working
on a little electric car, sort of a proto electric car.
And then the key moment really in the movie story
(07:30):
happens in eighteen eighty eight when he meets with this
guy Edward Mybridge, kind of this minor historical figure you
might have heard of. My Bridge was a photographer who
got famous. It was actually when he helped settle a
bet for Leland Stanford, the guy who pounded the Golden
spike in the transcontinentel Railroad. There was this bet, do
(07:53):
horses lift all four feet off the ground when they're running?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And they're running so fast you can't can't you.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Can't tell, you can't see it, right, And Stanford said yes,
And so my Bridge had developed this technique where he
could take rapid sequential photos of like animals in motions.
So he actually goes to Stanford's farm in Paloelto will
later be Stanford University and takes these pictures of the
horse running and and in fact you can see they
(08:19):
do lift up all four feet when they run. And
so my Bridge gets famous for these kinds of photos.
And he's talking to Edison about it. And you know,
if you think about, oh, rapid sequential photos of an
animal in motion.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
If you string them together fast enough, yes, it will
be a movie. Yes, it seems obvious.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes, yes, and it was. It was basically obvious at
the time. People in fact had started to make flip books,
which is you know this idea. There was this toy
called a zoetroph.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I've seen these, yeah, with the little slits in
them and you spin it and you can only see
one picture at a time. But it's like a guy
doing cartwheels or you know, something running. It's like it's.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Animation, right, It's this simple little animation. And so this
is all in the air. And after his meeting with
my Bridge, Edison assigns one of his assistants like, okay,
this is this is another project for us among all that,
you know, all the other things we're working on. He says,
go figure out how to build a you know, a
photographic system that can capture motion.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And at the time, this is Thomas Edison, the inventor. Right,
you have the idea, you delegate, you say, you have
a room full of all his animals. Do what you
have to do.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, yeah, And when Edison tells this guy to go
off and work on it. He does not know that
Louisla Prince, the guy we talked about at the beginning
of the story, is way ahead of him.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So let's talk about Loula Prince.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Louis. The Prince was born in eighteen forty one, a
few years before Edison, a little older than Edison. And
I should say, by the way, the details of his
life come from this book called The Man Who Invented
Motion Pictures by Paul Fisher. It's a good book. Paul
Fisher was generous enough to talk to me, actually, so
he was quite helpful in putting together this show. So
(10:00):
Louis's father is a French army officer named Louisa Prince.
Louis has an older brother named Louisa Prince.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It is a perfect name.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
It's a very good with another one. Oh yeah, I
reinvent the whale. His mother is not named Louis. His
mother's name is Elizabeth, and he grows up moving around
France because his dad's in the army. And you know,
this time, the middle of the eighteenth century is technologically incredible, and.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
We talked about this, right it feels like every day
something new is coming, and.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So Louis falls in love with both technology and art,
and he decides to devote himself to sort of combining
technology and art. Right, So he apprentices with a painter,
but he also studies optics and chemistry and he winds
up as a photographer, which is like the perfect ven
diagram overlap right. Photography is just like a few decades
(10:54):
old at this point. It is a new technology, and
so he's working on photography in France. He falls in
love with this young British artist named Lizzie, follows her
back to a town called Leeds, which I am informed
is in the UK. They start an art school together
and La Prince is really into these sort of creative
(11:17):
applications of photography. He gets well known for combining photography
with pottery. There is this moment in his life that
comes in eighteen eighty, so years before Edison starts thinking
about motion pictures. La Prince is thirty nine years old.
He's married, he has a couple kids. He's kind of restless.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, he's thirty nine year old man. He wants to
like spend time in the garage, tinkering with his tools.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Lived the dream right, so yes, And in fact, he
does have a little workshop out bind the house, you know,
a little photo studio, and one day he's out there
working and he has in his hand like a glass
plate and a piece of paper that both have the
same photograph on them, like a portrait, I think, and
for sec he sort of drops them. They start to
(12:02):
slip out of his hands and he reaches down to
grab them, and as they're like falling through the air,
he sees this motion and he thinks, ah.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You know, listen, I feel like when people tell these stories,
what they're doing actually is trying to capture that feeling
of an aha moment.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
You're saying, it has truthiness.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
It is truthiness, like it felt him that he had
this insight, and indeed he did have an insight. He's like,
this is possible. Yes, you're saying, maybe it didn't happen.
Louis la Prince from this point.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
On devotes his life to figuring out motion pictures. He
calls this moment the spark and you know, he has
this vision and it seems kind of hokey in retrospect,
but like admirable in its way that moving pictures are
going to like bring the world together. You know, people
of different nations will see the way foreigners live and
(12:58):
it will make them understand their common humanity or whatever.
And so he is in fact going to spend the
rest of his life on this. And not long after
this moment, he rents a bigger workshop, this one's in town,
and he hires a machinist and a woodworker, and he
hires his son, a Dolf, to come and work with him.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I know that we've spent two episodes talking about Thomas Edison,
but I am kind of rooting for the artist at
this point, right. I'm always rooting for the artists against
the big industrial might. At this point of Thomas Edison,
but you have to think about, like how hard this
is going to be? Right, film moves at twenty four
(13:38):
frames per second, and if you have glass plates, that's
what he's working on. He's thinking about.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Vist Place, that's what they're using at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I mean, twenty four times a second. You're gonna go
like it seems impossible.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Now, like how you're gonna even have that many glass plates,
how they're gonna not break?
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And yet and yet this is a moment when somehow
the movies feel kind of imminent, right, like everybody is
working on this problem.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And more than that, everybody's paying attention to everyone else.
This is the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize
in Economics. Came up with this idea of these ages
of innovation were really about communication. It was really about
a time when everyone's sending letters to each other, You're
reading about each other in the newspapers. Obviously, patents are
(14:27):
coming through in the United States, and so there are
times when not only are people feeling the spirit of invention,
but they're seeing exactly what other people are doing.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Joel mok here Joel o'kee won that Nobel. Yeah, and
you mentioned patents, which is really interesting, right, because patents
are in the US Constitution. Famously, the founders felt that
strongly about them, in part because what a patent does
is it makes you publish your idea. Right, Patents are public,
and that is the point. And like Edison is like
reading every patent, or having people who work for him
(14:58):
read every patent that comes through.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
That is core this idea of sharing knowledge. And we
see this with the invention of the Internet. We see
this with recently about AI. People are innovating, but they're
innovating in public and announcing almost immediately we've done this,
We've managed to do this and figure this out, and
it leads their competitors to say, like, wow, if that's possible,
maybe this other thing is possible.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, that is this big idea of simultaneous invention. Right.
And like the AI example is really interesting because you know,
the key breakthrough in AI in like the last decade
was just a paper that Google researcher is published.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
They figured out a better way to make AI work
on basically on Nvidia chips on GPUs. And they could
have kept that as a trade secret, right, Google could
have just built its own AI model on people and wow,
why is that so good? But they did the opposite.
They published it. And so that is what's happening with
the movies in the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Everybody is working, they're kind of working in public. People
are patenting things when they get patents, and so Le Prince,
as you said, he has this problem with the glass plates, right,
and so first he builds this sixteen lens camera that
is you can see pictures of it. That is amazing
to behold. Because his idea is like, what if you
could just have one and have like sixteen exposures like
(16:15):
the eye of a fly, Like the eye of a fly,
it's a fly camera, and then somehow you would you know,
playback each one. But like, that doesn't work for an
interesting reason, which is because the lenses are like next
to each other, each one is from a slightly different
point of view, right, and so it has to be
the exact same shot for the illusion of motion to.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Because it'll it'll be jumpy, feel it'll be jumping, make
you sick.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So the real breakthrough for La Prince comes from somewhere else.
Also classic innovation, kind of adjacency driving innovation. In this
case it's George Eastman of Eastman Kodek. Perhaps you've heard
of Kodek. I have used to be a great company.
George Eastman invents paper film, and you know, George Eastman
(16:56):
is not interested in the movies, right. He wants photography
to be like a hobby for everybody instead of a
thing you need professionals to do. And obviously George Eastman
is wildly successful. But Louis la Prince sees this paper
film and thinks, aha, I don't have to use glass plates,
and in fact, paper film is not ideal for the movies.
It's not translucence entirely, but it's a little bit translucent. Also,
(17:21):
it tends to catch fire because where you got to
put a bright light behind it to.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, movie quickly.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
That's a problem, but it works. The Prince is able
to build a movie camera and it's this beautiful mahogany
box with like brass hinges like in Williamsburg. They would
go crazy for this camera. He was an artist at
his heart, and in October of eighteen eighty eight, Louis
La Prince makes the first movies ever made. It's in
(17:51):
Leads where he's living. There's actually a few movies he
seems to make on this one day. And one of
the movies survives and is in fact on YouTube. Oh
so I put a link in the note. So here,
let's watch the movie. K you want to count us in?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Okay, So it's called Roundhay Garden. See it's eighteen eighty eight.
The Prince, All right back, get your big bag of popcorn.
You know, relax really, you know, put yourself in the
mood of watching a movie. Let's hit play in three
to one play and it's over. That's it. That's it.
(18:26):
It's two seconds long. Two seconds long, the very first movie. Yeah,
it makes it super hard to like show this at
a movie theater. Imagine the movie phone, you know, round
hey garden scene shows at two o'clock, two o'clock in
ten seconds, two o'clock in twenty seconds.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
But think of how many tickets you can see.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Oh my god, you could pack it.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
So okay, so let's actually talk for a second about
what's going on in the movie. Yeah, yea yeah, how
many people as four people on the screen.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
They were awkwardly, I would say, standing there, except it's
as if Louis la Prince I, who assume is behind
the camera. Yeah, told them I'm about to hit record.
I don't know what he would have called it. I'm
about to start the machine.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Move around, yeah, yeah, just start start doing something. So
there's a main guy who's sort of walking directly the
camera and then starts circling around.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
That's Adulf. That's Louis Son okay.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And there's in the back an old guy with a
top hat who is dancing. I guess he's doing a
little jig.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yes, so that is Adulf's grandfather. Luisla Prince's father in law.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And then there's a couple other people who are just like,
there's a woman and they're just sort.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Of like, yeah, it's a jiggling a bit, a family
friend and Louise's mother in law. But here's the thing,
you're mocking it.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
We're watching the Invention of movies and the first time
it's like that first photograph record that Mary had a
little lamb. The moment you see two seconds of this
and I assume it was longer this ise.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I think it was originally longer.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
This is like what lasted, But even at two seconds,
you can see exactly what it's going to be. You're like, oh,
I can have a whole scene here, and I can
see people's faces, and I can see movement, and I
can see cities I've never seen before. Like the dream
that he had of bringing people together is obvious as
we make fun of people from a undred and fifty
(20:12):
years ago on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, and you know, this is just a guy in
a little workshop in Leeds with a few people, like
you know, you talked about rooting for the loan inventor.
This is, at least at this moment, the victory of
the loan inventor.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
For a moment. Savor it because there is someone else
who's going to come back into the story, Thomas Alva Edison,
And we'll have his part of the story after the
break and we're back. We watched the round Hay Garden
(21:04):
scene four hundred more times.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Let's get back to Edison now. Okay, when we left Edison,
it was early eighteen eighty eight and he had just
told on one of his boys, one of his muckers,
to go off and invent moving pictures. The guy he
told to invent moving pictures was named William Kennedy Laurie Dixon.
(21:27):
Four names, four names, and he liked all four. Yes,
he would sign things w k l D. So a
little full of himself, but like also a hustler and
an important player in the movie story as we'll see.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
So.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
WKLD grew up in England and when he was like
eighteen or nineteen, he actually wrote to Edison to ask
for a job, as I'm sure thousands of young hustlers did.
Edison says no, But WKLD comes to the US anyway
and eventually does get a job working for Edison shows Moxie, Yeah,
he's got Moxie and he is an engineer, but he
(22:03):
also is Edison's personal photographer.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Of course Edison has a personal photographer, which you know
at this point in Edison's life, like he realizes that
he is a brand.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah, and maybe the most famous person in America, Like
it's it's we got to make it clear, like he's
not just like nerds love him, like everybody knows who
he is.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, but I say the word brand because he uses
that to get what he wants, to make progress, to
get money, to get investment, to get his inventions out there,
and to win. Like he knows that it's good for
business that whenever something's invented in the middle of the night,
he can step in at the last minute and have
his personal photographer take a photo of him next to it,
(22:45):
right by William Kennedy Laurie Dixon. And you know, this
is part of the reason Edison assigns him moving pictures.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Right. The kid knows how to use a camera. So
remember this is eighteen eighty eight. By this point, le
Prince has been working for like eight years on the camera.
Just a few months after Edison assigns WKLD to work
on moving pictures, Edison writes a letter to his patent.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Lawyers which I'm contractually obligated to read everything that you.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Tell me to read, so please read it.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Okay. I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for
the eye what the photograph does for the ear, which
is the recording and reproduction of things in motion and
in such form as to be both cheap, practical, and convenient.
And there's like a little drawing of a machine in
the letter.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yes, although that machine is not going to work at all.
It's in fact, when the movie camera is invented, it's
not going to be that.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
It was the poetry of this that was going to
get Thomas Edison ahead. So he has not invented the movies,
but he's written a thing that kind of sounds like
maybe he did. And when he does, he can say.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, I wrote this beautiful paragraph right, Yes, yes it is.
It is a legal gambit, and I just want to
note part of the reason I want to talk about
this letter is it's October eighth, eighteen eighty eight. The
day that Roundey Garden scene that first movie was filmed
is October oreenth, eighteen eighty eighth, same week, so it's
(24:15):
not not legal precedence. La Prince already has the patent,
but just the vibe of simultaneity is what I want
to capture here, right, Like, it is extraordinary how much
everybody is working on.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
This, and Edison's first instinct is to get his lawyers
to lock it down, put it on paper, file it.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yes, And what Edison is applying for isn't even a patent.
It's this thing called a caveat that is just like, well,
I'm not ready for a patent yet, but I got
the idea, and so if anybody else tries to get
in on it, you got to come check with me.
And you know, you were talking a minute ago about
Edison being aware of his own brand and that's serving him,
and it certainly did for sales and for raising capital,
(24:55):
but it also served him in intellectual property. Like there's
a pretty compelling argument that like, in the same way
that you know, Lebron James can get away with committing
fouls and not getting called the way ordinary players would
because he's famous. And it's like, oh, surely Lebron James
wouldn't commit that foul, Like Edison could do that with patents.
(25:17):
Right if a bunch of people have competing claims, which
is often the case because simultaneous invention. Edison will get
the benefit of the doubt. Because he's Edison, He's the
most famous inventor in the world. Of course, he must
have really invented this thing.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, and La Prince back in his backyard shed has
to know this, that he is not the most famous
guy in this race. And so his motivation is I
need to make it work, and I need to show
it to people that it actually works, not just written
on a piece of paper like Thomas Edison did.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yes, yes, like everything gets litigated, right. Everything is a race,
and so the way you win is not just in
court with patents. It's being first to market, being first
to show the thing, being first to go in a
room and say, hey, look, I built this movie camera.
Here is a movie. No one has ever made a
movie before. And so La Prince, Yes, he has built
(26:09):
his camera and made his movie and has his petance.
Now he needs to show it to the world.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Okay, the battle is set. The lone inventor versus the
most famous man in America, the little guy versus the
industrial invention machine. Oh, this would make a great movie.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, if they existed yet, go on, Loui's going to
go to New York, right, He's going to have his
premiere in Edison's backyard, basically. But first, as you may
recall from the beginning of today's show, he's going to
go visit his brother in Dijon in France. And it's
not exactly clear why, you know, maybe he just wanted
to see him, but it is the case that Louis
(26:46):
had some money problems. There was an inheritance, like a house.
I think that they'd inherited from their mother, and so
maybe there's some money situation.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Classic going to argue with the fantastic Classic. So he
goes to see his brother in.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Dijon, gets on a train to Paris, disappears, is never
seen again. And let's just do that New York's on
headline one more time.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
You know, I could do it forever. The kinetograph Edison's
latest and most prizing device, pure motion, recorded and reproduced.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And then Lizzie sees that headline and thinks, Thomas Edison
stole my idea and killed my husband.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
With five pounds of peacock feathers.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
That's what the twenty five pounds of Marlon.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Was Lizzy at the time because this has taken over
her husband's life and now he's missing, and sees this
like she has got to be so full of rage.
They do have the film though.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yes they have the film, They have the camera, it's
there in leads, and he has a patent right. So
it seems like a robust legal case. It's obviously not
going to bring her husband back, but at least you know,
you could whatever, have his Yeah, have his name, makes
your move. But but there is this element of intellectual
(28:01):
property law at the time that is devastating for Lizzie
making this case, and that is this, if someone is missing,
there is eight years of waiting period before they can
be declared dead. And while they're missing, their property, including
their intellectual property, is in this kind of limbo right,
(28:22):
So Louis la Prince owns this intellectual property and maybe
he's still alive as far as the law is concerned.
So in this key moment in the development of movies,
Lizzy can't do anything. She can't bring a case because
it's not her intellectual property to sue with.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Do we think at this point that Edison has seen
the film? I mean he has his fingers and everything.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, I mean he would have probably seen the patent, right,
somebody who worked for him would very likely have seen
the patent, But as far as I know, not the film.
The film is there in the UK. The big moment
was going to be the New York premiere. And remember
this is just like less than a year before that
he has disappeared. So Edison has probably not seen the
film or the movie camera, and so Lizzie can't do
much during this waiting period.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Tell you who can do something? Thomas Edison's invention factory
never sleeps. They've already started to work on and they
are going to.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Be really yes, yes, And so you'll remember William Kennedy,
Lourie Dixon, our man fra Guess on the job and
you know WKLD. He's keeping up with all this stuff
that people are doing, with all the patents, and in
fact tries to do like a movie projector style movie
at some point, but can't get that to work. The
film just isn't whatever good enough or clear enough, and
(29:31):
so it comes up with this other model instead, which
is instead of projecting the movie onto a screen onto
the wall, they build a little box with a little
hole in the top, and you look down into the
box like one person, and you see a little short
movie of like, you know, a strong man lifting weights
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And actually, you know this fits with Thomas Edison and
his strength as a businessman. Right. He wasn't looking at
the movies as some sort of artistic form that was
going to bring the world together. Kumbai yah. He was like, well,
how do I put something in a box? Get someone
to put a nickel inside, We'll put my face on it.
We'll put it in Coney Island, and eventually, like, I
(30:09):
will have so many nickels. I have a big room
filled with them in West Orange.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
To dive into them like a not very rich scrooge
Nick Duck.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So many nickels, right, And Edison does, in fact do this.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
He builds his little money machine and people line up
because it is this miraculous thing, moving pictures, and now
he actually needs movies to show. It's like, oh no,
we got the box. People are lighting up. We got
to show up new movies so they'll give us more nickels.
And in fact, Dixon oversees construction of this movie studio.
I think the world's first movie studio, although other people
(30:41):
are working on things, and it's this it's this weird
building and it's there in West Orange, right by the lab,
and it's optimized to get sunlight, right, because early cameras
aren't very good. Early lighting is still not that good.
They need a lot of light. So they do two
things with this building that are just delightful. One they
have like a hinged roof so they can open it
up and let the sunshine in. And two it's on
(31:03):
a big like turntable so they can turn it so
that the sunlight can come in.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It's like a retractable roof stadium.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, crossed with like one of those restaurants at the
top of a tall building that spins around. Have you
ever been to one of those? I've never been to it.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I have been to them. They moved very slowly. They
moved very slowly. You know. I would pay a nickel
just to like be in the studio and have it
rotate with the sun.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Oh for sure. Yeah, yeah, now you've invented the studio tour.
Early films include Blacksmith Scene, Oh It's a good one,
Washing the Baby, who Oscar Nominee, and The Boxing Cats.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
No Way, What are the first movies. Ever is a
cat video.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, and like this has a very kind of whatever
I don't know Instagram TikTok vibe, Like Washing the Baby
is tradwise Blacksmith. I feel like there must be Blacksmith influencers.
So so Edison's in the movie business, but he doesn't
have it to himself for long, right, This is the
simultaneous invention thing again. Right, Over the next few years,
more and more people are developing their own movie cameras,
(32:01):
making their own movies. But of course Edison is Edison
has you know, as many lawyers as he wants at
his disposal, and so he's what is I guess the
obvious thing, decides to basically sue everybody else out of existence. Sure,
so sure, clear the field. And so, you know, the
first few companies he goes and Susie like, oh it's Edison, Okay, bye, whatever,
(32:24):
We're done. But then he gets this one company that
is doing pretty well. It's called the Mutoscope Company. And
by this point that company, which is Edison's main rival,
is run by one William Kennedy Lori Dixon.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Wuk l D who left Edison I assue left, who
left to go to go to a competitor. Y Ah,
and like this is classic. This is a classic moment
in the age of innovation. Right, It's not just ideas,
it's this process knowledge of people who know how to
do something and immediately are valuable and can go and
start their own businesses or get hired by someone else.
(33:01):
I mean we saw this at the dawn of Silicon Valley, rightly. Yes,
it's not as you know, the guy who led the
invention of the transistor, Williams shot it's not even starting
his big company, right, Shockley Semiconductor. It's his employees, the traders.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
And traders eight work.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yeah, they leave, they start their own company and then
they go start Intel. Like this is how it works.
This is simultaneous invention and taking those ideas and really
seeding them to a bunch of different companies and competitors. Yes.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yes, And and in fact, the mutoscope machines, the machines
that A. Dixon's company is making, are quite like Edison's machines, right,
They're they're not projecting on a screen, there're still you
look into a little box. And in the UK, the
mutoscope machines were known as the what the Butler Saw machines,
(33:55):
because their most famous movie was you look into this thing,
and you have the point of view like you're looking
through an old school people like a little key lock,
you know, and what you see as a woman taking
off some of her clothes, some of her clothes, some
of her clothes. And this was a smash hit. And
so yeah, of course of core porn, yes, which, by
the way, so now we're like whatever, a few years
(34:16):
into the history of movies, not a decade into the
history of movies, and you have like cat videos and
softcore porn. So you can basically shut it down now,
no more innovation. That's it.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
That's the thing that drives innovation, frankly right.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, classic classic story of video, right, the porn industry
and like video, the internet, also the Mutoscope. It turns
out so okay, Edison sues Mutoscope. Mutoscope does not roll over.
They hire their own lawyers, and their lawyer's legal strategy
is to prove that Edison was not the first person
(34:51):
to invent moving.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Pictures, because they know who was, louis La Prince. Yes,
louis La Prince did it. Patent is right there, you know,
for everybody to see. And so he's not there, but
his patent is, his patent is, and.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
The Mutoscope lawyers get in touch with Lizzie, you know,
Louise's wife, and Adulph his son, and you know, so
like this to them feels like their moment, right, Like
there are just two people. There's no way they're going
to be able to go up against Edison. But Mutoscope
is a real company with revenues, and so Adolf gets
(35:25):
ready to testify. He goes back to England. He gets
the camera, the machine, he takes the round hey garden
scene and like pace the images onto like you know, board,
so they can have it in court. He gets like
sworn statements from people who were working with him.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
And the family of lou the Prince could finally get
this confrontation in a court room with I assume reporters
there the trial of the century, like it's the.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Edison right, you know it's going to be in the
papers because Edison is involved, right, So the trial happens.
Adolph in fact gets called to testify and the Mutoscope
lawyer asks him, do you have any films from this
camera that your father invented? And Adolph you know, shows
the pictures of the round he garden scene, which you
remember he was in it and his grandparents were in it.
(36:09):
And then the lawyer says, when were these photographs taken?
And Adolph says October eighteen eighty eight, which again is
you know, well before Edison had his claim. And then
the lawyer for Edison, like I guess in cross examination,
says to Adolf, well, there's no way you can prove
(36:30):
that October eighteen eighty eight is when the movie was filmed.
These are just pictures. And Adolf says, I can fix
the date exactly by the fact that my grandmother, who
remembers in the movie, by the fact that my grandmother
died on the twenty fourth of October eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Courtroom gasps.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
And yet, and yet it doesn't really worked out for
Adulf and Lizzie. This is the high point for them.
But you know, it becomes clear that, you know, the
Mutoscope lawyers are not there to validate the claim of
Louis le Prince. In fact, at some level, they don't
want like, you know, La Prince's ears. They don't want
(37:11):
a dolphin Lizzy to be able to like take away
the movies from them, So they want to like do
enough to undermine Edison, sure, but not so much that
they undermine themselves, Like they don't even want to see
the camera. And then there are these details where like
louis Us patent was for the sixteen lens camera and
not the one lens camera, and they don't want to
know about that, and so ultimately, ultimately a dolphin Lizzie
(37:35):
don't get the victory they want.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
And afterwards people aren't putting up statues to Louis La
Prince and putting them in the textbooks as like this
huge inventor, I mean, he kind of gets lost to time.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
He gets totally lost. And the court case, as intellectual
property cases tend to do, goes on forever, right, goes
on for years and years, back and forth. The end
of this Edison versus Mutoscope case is this very strange
to me outcome, and that's this. The two companies get
to keep their intellectual property and everybody else gets sort
(38:07):
of wiped away. It's like, okay, you two whatever, We're
not going to sort it out between YouTube, but you
two are good. You guys can keep making movies. And
so what Edison and Mutoscope decide to do since there's
only two. What do you do if it's whatever nineteen
hundred ish, You form a trust. You're like, you know what,
we could just compete each other down to bits, or
we could just tim up and not have to compete
(38:29):
and share all those nickels.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Edison's got like a playbook. Either invent it first, or
you patent it first, or you get the caveat, or
you sue everybody. And you know, if it looks like
you're not gonna win, you just say, let's get together, like,
let's dominate this industry. And in this particular case, they
dominated the technology they were making the movies. They had
this like vertical corporation.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
They were invented, yes, and you know they really lock
down not just the cameras and the projectors, but the
whole industry. They actually bring in to their trust. It's
called the Motion Picture Patents Company is the official name.
They bring into their trust. Kodak, because Kodak is making
the film right, and they already have their studio, so
the actors are working for them. And this Edison Trust dominates,
(39:16):
just dominates the early movie business. And delightful twist, this
dominance helps to create Hollywood. So Hollywood the place I mean, yes,
but also like Hollywood, the idea, the movie industry as
we know it. Okay, so here's what happens.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
So the people who.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Are buying from the Edison Trust are theater owners, right,
They are not in the cartel. They are the ones
paying the cartel.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And they are not like big highly capitalized ventures, right.
These are like basically immigrant hustlers, guys who are like
in the fur business a year ago.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, they're real estate guys. Right. They own a.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, maybe maybe maybe they have like a vaudeville theater, right,
and they realize, like, oh sad having to pay the actors.
We could just put a movie up there and people
will still pay, right, And so they really come to
resent this Edison Trust.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Well, of course, because like, buying from a cartel is terrible.
You have no negotiation feed. They can lock you out
of the business. They can put you out of business
if you don't buy what they're asking for.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, it's great to be a cartel. It's terrible to
be the customer of a cartel, exactly right, Not only
because they can jack up prices, right, but also because
they can sell you a crap product. You know, like
what you're not gonna buy from anybody else. They don't
have any incentive to make a better movie. Yeah, And
that's an unappreciated danger of a monopoly, right, is that
(40:36):
we always talk about the money. Oh, I'm gonna have
to pay more for this monopoly, But it's really that
there's no reason for the monopoly to innovate, Like why
would the movies have to be better, longer, or nicely lit,
you know, or something beyond what the butler saw. You
don't have to innovate at all. Yeah, And I mean conversely,
like the other side of the same coin is like
competition is core to why a market economy is great, Yes, right,
(41:01):
Like you want many people firms competing to make something better.
You want five different companies, twenty different companies trying to
make a better movie to sell it to the movie theaters.
And when there's a cartel, you don't have that. So
how do they get to Hollywood?
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Right? So just distance from the New York cartoon.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Well, so it's part of it. Right. So, So here's
what happens. The theater owners who are the ones getting
jammed by the cartel, They start making their own movies.
But doing it on the slide. There are these stories
where like they'll like have an Edison camera there, but
then have secretly like one of the band cameras or
a camera from Europe or something on the side. And
(41:41):
you know, part of trying to avoid the Edison Trust,
which is headquartered in you know, New Jersey, New York,
is let's go far away, Like how far away can
you get? And the answer in the United States. Just
look at a map continental the United States, southern California
and plenty of that sun they need. Yeah, so right,
so it's not just Edison. We should be clear, Like
(42:02):
there were a few other things. There was plenty of sun.
Land was cheap, so you could, you know, buy your
studio lot for cheap. There were lots of different landscapes
so you could fit like your western out of the desert.
You could go to the mountains, you could go to
the beach. And they weren't just hiding right like they
were suing. There were anti trust laws and you know,
we're into the kind of nineteen hundreds and nineteen ten's
(42:23):
at this point, and this is a moment when finally
the anti trust laws that have been on the books
for decades are finally starting to be enforced in a
meaningful way. And there are these Supreme Court decisions in
nineteen seventeen and nineteen eighteen that say, oh yeah, it's
the Edison Trust is a trust, and we have these
anti trust laws. You can't have a cartel. It's right
(42:45):
there in the name, it's right there in the day.
And they break up the trust. And that's basically the
end of Edison in the movie business and the beginning
of Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
We still have one threat to pick up what happened
to Luis le Prince.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yes, and we're gonna tell the rest of the Edison
story in just a minute. That's the end of the ads. Robert,
(43:24):
give us an outline for the rest of the show.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Okay, three things we have left to do today. One,
figure out what to make of Loui la Prince and
Edison in the movies, like what's our lesson here? Number Two,
we're going to do the true crime thing. We're going
to figure out who killed Louis la Prince. It's good, good.
And three we're going to end our Edison series and
talk about the end of Edison's life.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Okay, So first on that list is what to make
of Edison and the Prince in the movies, like, what
is this story really about? And on this one, I
want to go do Schumpeter. I thought it was Shumpeter,
but I looked it up. It's Schumpeter.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Joseph Schumpeter. Wow, I've never said it like that. Yeah,
Joseph Schumpeter also known as Schumpeter in Silicon Valley where
they love this guy creative destruction if you've heard that.
That's what he came up with and is still cited
to this day. The idea that in order for progress
to be made, big companies often fail and young, scrappy
(44:23):
companies come up to take their place.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
And so for Schumbacher, the sort of key hero was
the entrepreneur. And there is this thing he wrote in
nineteen eleven that distinguished the inventor from the entrepreneur, talked
about how they're different. And I think that distinction is
the key for me and understanding this story and understanding
Louis La Prince definitely the inventor, and Edison, who is
(44:50):
clearly an inventor but is also an entrepreneur. So read
Robert read if you would, this little thing that I pulled.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
It's quote in time. As long as they are not
carried into practice, inventions are economically irrelevant, and to carry
an improvement into effect is a task entirely different from
the inventing of it, and a task moreover require ring
entirely different kinds of aptitudes. It is therefore not advisable,
and it might be downright misleading to stress the element
(45:18):
of invention as much as many writers do. It's not
about the invention, and it's interesting like that last part
as much as many writers do. Right, So he's sort
of distinguishing here between what's happening with technology, with the economy,
and how do we tell the story right, And he's
saying the story, the writing of it is like the invention,
(45:39):
of course, the person discovering the thing, but he's also
saying like, that's only one piece of it, and making
the invention a thing in the world, a thing in
the world that people will pay for, is hugely important
and super underrated.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
And you know, if you map that idea to this story,
you can say, well, so what that Luis La Prince
came up with the movie camera first, right, everybody was
working on it.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Someone was going to do it in the next year
or yeah, somebody was going to do it.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
What's important is, in Schiumbader's words, carrying it in to practice,
making it a thing in the world. You know, would
the Prince have done that if he had survived? Maybe,
but maybe not. Right, Like that part is hard. He
didn't have any money. We do know that Edison was
really good at.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Making things real branding, the manufacturing, the money part, the lawyers,
the patents, the building of the studio that could rotate
feels like the kind of practical, like we need to
solve a problem and we need to film in New Jersey,
and this is what we've come up with.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yeah, I mean, go back to that letter that you
read that he wrote in October of eighteen eighty eight
when he just started working on this. You know, in
the very first sentence he says, yeah, we want to
invent whatever a camera. But then he says in that
for sentence, a camera in such a form as to
be both cheap, practical and convenient. Right, Like first sentence,
He's not like, oh, movies going to change the world.
(47:03):
He's like, I want to make a thing that is cheap,
practical and convenient. That is the entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
This actually reminds me of the discussion we're having today
about China, because right, there's a whole thing about well China,
like do they really invent anything. We're in the United
States of America. We are the inventors. But what they
have is process knowledge. They have what Schumpeter's talking about,
focusing on cheap, practical, and convenient applications of technology, and
(47:30):
through that constant iteration can often come out ahead without
the aha, lone inventor moment.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Yeah, fast follower? Is that fast follower? Is that what
they call that?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (47:40):
So think about Edison in this context, right, Like, he
didn't just want to invent the light bulb. He wanted
to deliver electric power to millions of people cheaply, you know,
at scale, and he did so. He was definitely an entrepreneur.
I mean, also he was a flawed entrepreneur, right, Like
he invented the phonograph. Unlike with this like phonograph, he
(48:01):
was way out in front and like was not the
first one to bring it to market because he got distracted.
He was the first one to build a big electric grid,
but bet on the wrong kind of current, right as
we talk about. But fundamentally he was an entrepreneur, and
I would argue that that's why he is so famous
(48:21):
as an inventor, right, because we love stories of inventors,
but we want stories of inventors who things get out
into the world. And so by being such a good entrepreneur,
Edison became the most famous inventor in history.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
This is where we will leave Edison for a moment,
and let's move to number two. Louis la Prince. Who
killed him? It was probably not Thomas Alva Edison.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
It was probably not Thomas Alva Edison. So for this one,
I go back to Paul Fisher, the guy who wrote
this relatively recent book about Louisla Prince. And when I
talked to Paul Fisher, we actually got into who killed
Louis le Prince in some detail. He has a pretty
compelling theory and it goes like this. The last thing
we know Louili Prince did was he went to visit
his brother.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
In Djon, in Dijon famous for their mustard.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yes, I guess.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
So.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
You know there was this inheritance, right, that was something
of an issue between them. The brother is the last
one ever to see him alive. And then after he disappears.
He's like, what should we do? Should we take out
ads in the papers? And you know, see if anybody's
seen him? And the brother says, no, no, I'm taking
out ads in the papers. Don't worry. But when Paul Fisher,
this author went back to look in the papers, no
(49:31):
ads and so like that one seems pretty compelling to me.
It was the brother was the brother probably because of money,
like boring, but boring is what you want, right, It's
like the Okham's rasor answer.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
And I guess if Thomas Edison were listening to this show,
he'd be like, yeah, of course, like I have lawyers,
I don't need to kill people.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
That's right. That's why you get rich, that's why you
become Thomas Edison, so you could take their ideas without
killing them.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
So that's the end of the movie story. And it
seems like maybe this is the end of the series, right,
so let's just do the rest of his life, Like
what is left for Thomas Edison to do at this point?
Speaker 3 (50:08):
I mean it's interesting, right because he's in his forties
when he gets into the movie business, like prime of
his life, and he certainly doesn't feel like he's done
he's not done. He for decades after this, keeps working.
I mean, he's super famous, and he works on lots
of different things. He works on a new kind of battery,
(50:29):
still working on an electric car. He gets into the
cement business, the Edison Cement Works or something, and actually
pours these concrete houses in New Jersey as this dream
for the concrete house. I think you can still see
some of these houses. He tries like seventeen thousand different
plants looking for a domestic source of.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Rubber, rubber so you don't have to go to the Amazon.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah. Right, And this was like a national security concern
at the time, like I don't know, like rare earths
today or something, but bigger. But none of these I
mean like he makes some technical progress on them, but
none of them are like big breakthroughs. He says, famous, right,
famous enough that remember like when he dies in nineteen
thirty one, the President of the United States declares this
national moment of mourning. But if we take by his
(51:13):
own measure, you know, his own measure was not incremental progress,
not the ideas for ideas themselves. It was things people
will pay for. It was things that become a big
thing in the world. In the second half of his life,
he doesn't have any big hits. But still you really
just have to step back and say, not only did
(51:34):
he invent all these things, he created at least three
industries entire transformative industries. Photograph in the recording industry.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
The movie business, the electric business, which is in everything.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
Yeah, like electricity was like the fundamental transformative technology of
the twentieth century. We can say Thomas Edison had a
very good run. I mean, without Thomas Edison you couldn't
have like two guys talking into microphones and calling it
a job.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang, our engineer is Sarah Bruguier,
and our showrunner is Ryan Dilly. I'm Jacob Goldstein and
I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another
episode of.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
Business History, a show about the history wait for it,
of business Robert Smith. As you know, there is nowhere
in Pushkin's office to make a video to make a
video podcast, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
We tried, and it was described as two gray men
in a gray.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Box and reasonably so fortunately for us.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
In an amazing.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Coincidence, literally down the hall from Pushkin's office, there is
the showroom of a company called Buzzy Space. This is
a company is where we're sitting right now. And what
they do is they design furniture and acoustic solutions that
make I'm reading here workplace is more comfortable, more creative,
and more fun.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
I would even say cozy. Their furniture is like sort
of curved and interesting colors and I guess keeps things quiet.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yes, honestly, I wish our office was this showroom. You
can find more at buzzy dot space. That's b u
z z I dot space.
Pushkin too quick.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
No, it's perfect push kid stop you got it.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Robert Smith. We're starting this one with a little true crime.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oh I love it, Bring me back.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
It's the fall of eighteen ninety and there's a guy
named Louis Le Prince. He's French, and he's about to
show the world that he has invented the movies moving pictures.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Love it.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
He's spent about a decade at this point developing a
camera slash projector. Almost went broke a couple times, but
finally now he has it. He has done it. He's
built a camera, he has filmed the first movie ever made,
and he's going to go to New York to show
the world. He's going to have the premiere of all premiers,
the very first of one, Yes, the premier premiere number one.
(01:21):
But first he decides he's going to go visit his brother,
his brother who lives in as you say, Dijon, this
is the frenchest story up here in France. Yes, I
think he does have a mustache. Also, from there, he's
going to go Jon Paris, Paris, London, London. New York
couldn't go direct at that time, and so he goes
to visit his brother, spends a few days there, and
then on September sixteenth, eighteen ninety Louis la Prince, the
(01:45):
man who invented movies, gets on the train from Dijon
to Paris. He has never seen again. He disappears. His
wife at that time was living in New York, his wife, Lizzie,
and you know, she's waiting for him to show up.
But at that time people are late. Things happen, but
she starts to get nervous, and her nervousness turns into panic.
(02:08):
She starts going down to the battery, down to the
southern tip of Manhattan every day, watch the ships come in,
and you know, see if she can see him come
off the ship. Nothing. And so she's contacting her family
back in England. She's contacting his brother in France. Nobody
knows anything. He's gone. And then on May twenty eighth,
(02:31):
eighteen ninety one, this is less than a year after
he disappeared, Lizzie sees this headline on the front page
of the New York Sun. Why don't you give it
to us?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I read it to us. The kinetograph Edison's latest and
most surprising device, pure motion recorded and reproduced.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Lizzie reads this headline and she thinks to herself, I mean,
I know what happened. It's obvious what happened. Thomas Edison
chilled my husband and stole his idea. Jacques. I'm Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And I'm Robert Smith. And this is Business History, a
show about the history of business.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well smug, well smug in the Raid Today.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I'm proud of the show. This is our third and
final episode about Thomas Edison. In the first episode, we
talked about how Edison invented this whole new way of
inventing things. Second episode, he brings electricity to the world,
but also manages to screw it up a little and
bet on the wrong horse. And today we talk about
(03:32):
Edison's last big success, the movies, the motion pictures.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Kind of the key theme that the sort of big
idea in the show today is simultaneous invention, you know,
the sort of classic invention story. And this was like
say true of Edison in the Phonograph. Is one guy
or one team just coming up with this idea that
nobody saw coming, making this huge breakthrough out on their own.
But that's unusual, right A lot of the time, maybe
(03:59):
most of the time, big breakthroughs are not like that.
There are all these different teams and everybody knows that
a breakthrough is coming, and everybody is racing, working on
different techniques to get to the same place. And it's
really interesting to look at the story and think, well,
in that setting, who wins, who loses and why? And
in particular, in this case, it's the story of how
(04:21):
Edison does not invent the movies but still wins.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's also about a murder.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
There was a murder in the show today, allegedly. I mean,
I definitely died.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, that's true. That's true, and he would have by now.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Oh yeah, yes, they're all dead. Now, so let's pick
up the Edison story. We're going to pick it up
in eighteen eighty seven when Edison has just turned forty.
He's forty years old, and he moves his lab from
Menlo Park to West Orange.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
The Wizard of West Orange. Actually that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
It's not bad. But he's still the Wizard of Menlo Park,
but now he has a much bigger and better lab.
You know, you remember from the first episode.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
He had everything in one place, in one room essentially, yes,
and so now he is an international celebrity with backing
from the most powerful and rich financiers in the world.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
And this new lab reflects that actually lab isn't even
a big enough for it. It's a compound, right, So
he builds like a factory where they're making phonographs, you know,
the record players and the records to go on them.
And then the lab is this like super lab, multi
stories high. There's a machine shop, and then the sort
of heart of it is the lab, right, and now
(05:30):
Edison can buy everything. He buys every metal in existence, apparently,
of course, thousands of dollars of chemicals. And then I
found I found this one list that I guess it's
just like the plant and animal products they bought, and
I love it. We read it, read it.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
For I picture this wall, and we're reading the things
along the wall, right, hog bristles, porcupine quills, tanned walrus hide,
because you don't want the raw.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Right skins of every known animal, every known animal. It's
like Noah's arc.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
A pound of peacock tails, a dozen bulls hordes just
in case eleven is enough a do and walrus tusk's
twenty five pounds of marlin the fish.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Marlin's for eating, Like I wonder twenty five pounds a
mile is after snacking or for inventing.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
That's the whole thing in Edison's mind. You never knew
that there was going to be some solution and some
guy's gonna say, Marlin, we got Marlin.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I mean, so right, So there's a few ways I'm
thinking about this, but like the simple one is he
wants to be able to invent everything all the time. Yeah,
and that's kind of what he's doing at this point.
He's got hundreds of workers and he's assigning all different
people to all different projects all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
But still at the age of forty, like it's been
a while since Edison has like had a big hit
kind of yeah, right, I mean he moved to Menlo
Park in the late what eighteen seventies and came out
the phonograph right away, right like right away, Everyone's like,
this is magic, right, light bulb. Everyone knows about this.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Now he's working on lots of different things. He's been
He's trying to invent iron mining. That's actually what he's
really into at this point. He's bought an iron mine
and he's built this four milling plant, and he loves
to go out there and get dirty. He's actually working
on a little electric car, sort of a proto electric car.
And then the key moment really in the movie story
(07:30):
happens in eighteen eighty eight when he meets with this
guy Edward Mybridge, kind of this minor historical figure you
might have heard of. My Bridge was a photographer who
got famous. It was actually when he helped settle a
bet for Leland Stanford, the guy who pounded the Golden
spike in the transcontinentel Railroad. There was this bet, do
(07:53):
horses lift all four feet off the ground when they're running?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And they're running so fast you can't can't you.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Can't tell, you can't see it, right, And Stanford said yes,
And so my Bridge had developed this technique where he
could take rapid sequential photos of like animals in motions.
So he actually goes to Stanford's farm in Paloelto will
later be Stanford University and takes these pictures of the
horse running and and in fact you can see they
(08:19):
do lift up all four feet when they run. And
so my Bridge gets famous for these kinds of photos.
And he's talking to Edison about it. And you know,
if you think about, oh, rapid sequential photos of an
animal in motion.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
If you string them together fast enough, yes, it will
be a movie. Yes, it seems obvious.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes, yes, and it was. It was basically obvious at
the time. People in fact had started to make flip books,
which is you know this idea. There was this toy
called a zoetroph.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I've seen these, yeah, with the little slits in
them and you spin it and you can only see
one picture at a time. But it's like a guy
doing cartwheels or you know, something running. It's like it's.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Animation, right, It's this simple little animation. And so this
is all in the air. And after his meeting with
my Bridge, Edison assigns one of his assistants like, okay,
this is this is another project for us among all that,
you know, all the other things we're working on. He says,
go figure out how to build a you know, a
photographic system that can capture motion.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And at the time, this is Thomas Edison, the inventor. Right,
you have the idea, you delegate, you say, you have
a room full of all his animals. Do what you
have to do.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, yeah, And when Edison tells this guy to go
off and work on it. He does not know that
Louisla Prince, the guy we talked about at the beginning
of the story, is way ahead of him.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So let's talk about Loula Prince.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Louis. The Prince was born in eighteen forty one, a
few years before Edison, a little older than Edison. And
I should say, by the way, the details of his
life come from this book called The Man Who Invented
Motion Pictures by Paul Fisher. It's a good book. Paul
Fisher was generous enough to talk to me, actually, so
he was quite helpful in putting together this show. So
(10:00):
Louis's father is a French army officer named Louisa Prince.
Louis has an older brother named Louisa Prince.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
It is a perfect name.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
It's a very good with another one. Oh yeah, I
reinvent the whale. His mother is not named Louis. His
mother's name is Elizabeth, and he grows up moving around
France because his dad's in the army. And you know,
this time, the middle of the eighteenth century is technologically incredible, and.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
We talked about this, right it feels like every day
something new is coming, and.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So Louis falls in love with both technology and art,
and he decides to devote himself to sort of combining
technology and art. Right, So he apprentices with a painter,
but he also studies optics and chemistry and he winds
up as a photographer, which is like the perfect ven
diagram overlap right. Photography is just like a few decades
(10:54):
old at this point. It is a new technology, and
so he's working on photography in France. He falls in
love with this young British artist named Lizzie, follows her
back to a town called Leeds, which I am informed
is in the UK. They start an art school together
and La Prince is really into these sort of creative
(11:17):
applications of photography. He gets well known for combining photography
with pottery. There is this moment in his life that
comes in eighteen eighty, so years before Edison starts thinking
about motion pictures. La Prince is thirty nine years old.
He's married, he has a couple kids. He's kind of restless.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, he's thirty nine year old man. He wants to
like spend time in the garage, tinkering with his tools.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Lived the dream right, so yes, And in fact, he
does have a little workshop out bind the house, you know,
a little photo studio, and one day he's out there
working and he has in his hand like a glass
plate and a piece of paper that both have the
same photograph on them, like a portrait, I think, and
for sec he sort of drops them. They start to
(12:02):
slip out of his hands and he reaches down to
grab them, and as they're like falling through the air,
he sees this motion and he thinks, ah.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You know, listen, I feel like when people tell these stories,
what they're doing actually is trying to capture that feeling
of an aha moment.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
You're saying, it has truthiness.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
It is truthiness, like it felt him that he had
this insight, and indeed he did have an insight. He's like,
this is possible. Yes, you're saying, maybe it didn't happen.
Louis la Prince from this point.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
On devotes his life to figuring out motion pictures. He
calls this moment the spark and you know, he has
this vision and it seems kind of hokey in retrospect,
but like admirable in its way that moving pictures are
going to like bring the world together. You know, people
of different nations will see the way foreigners live and
(12:58):
it will make them understand their common humanity or whatever.
And so he is in fact going to spend the
rest of his life on this. And not long after
this moment, he rents a bigger workshop, this one's in town,
and he hires a machinist and a woodworker, and he
hires his son, a Dolf, to come and work with him.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I know that we've spent two episodes talking about Thomas Edison,
but I am kind of rooting for the artist at
this point, right. I'm always rooting for the artists against
the big industrial might. At this point of Thomas Edison,
but you have to think about, like how hard this
is going to be? Right, film moves at twenty four
(13:38):
frames per second, and if you have glass plates, that's
what he's working on. He's thinking about.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Vist Place, that's what they're using at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I mean, twenty four times a second. You're gonna go
like it seems impossible.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Now, like how you're gonna even have that many glass plates,
how they're gonna not break?
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And yet and yet this is a moment when somehow
the movies feel kind of imminent, right, like everybody is
working on this problem.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And more than that, everybody's paying attention to everyone else.
This is the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize
in Economics. Came up with this idea of these ages
of innovation were really about communication. It was really about
a time when everyone's sending letters to each other, You're
reading about each other in the newspapers. Obviously, patents are
(14:27):
coming through in the United States, and so there are
times when not only are people feeling the spirit of invention,
but they're seeing exactly what other people are doing.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Joel mok here Joel o'kee won that Nobel. Yeah, and
you mentioned patents, which is really interesting, right, because patents
are in the US Constitution. Famously, the founders felt that
strongly about them, in part because what a patent does
is it makes you publish your idea. Right, Patents are public,
and that is the point. And like Edison is like
reading every patent, or having people who work for him
(14:58):
read every patent that comes through.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
That is core this idea of sharing knowledge. And we
see this with the invention of the Internet. We see
this with recently about AI. People are innovating, but they're
innovating in public and announcing almost immediately we've done this,
We've managed to do this and figure this out, and
it leads their competitors to say, like, wow, if that's possible,
maybe this other thing is possible.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, that is this big idea of simultaneous invention. Right.
And like the AI example is really interesting because you know,
the key breakthrough in AI in like the last decade
was just a paper that Google researcher is published.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
They figured out a better way to make AI work
on basically on Nvidia chips on GPUs. And they could
have kept that as a trade secret, right, Google could
have just built its own AI model on people and wow,
why is that so good? But they did the opposite.
They published it. And so that is what's happening with
the movies in the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Everybody is working, they're kind of working in public. People
are patenting things when they get patents, and so Le Prince,
as you said, he has this problem with the glass plates, right,
and so first he builds this sixteen lens camera that
is you can see pictures of it. That is amazing
to behold. Because his idea is like, what if you
could just have one and have like sixteen exposures like
(16:15):
the eye of a fly, Like the eye of a fly,
it's a fly camera, and then somehow you would you know,
playback each one. But like, that doesn't work for an
interesting reason, which is because the lenses are like next
to each other, each one is from a slightly different
point of view, right, and so it has to be
the exact same shot for the illusion of motion to.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Because it'll it'll be jumpy, feel it'll be jumping, make
you sick.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So the real breakthrough for La Prince comes from somewhere else.
Also classic innovation, kind of adjacency driving innovation. In this
case it's George Eastman of Eastman Kodek. Perhaps you've heard
of Kodek. I have used to be a great company.
George Eastman invents paper film, and you know, George Eastman
(16:56):
is not interested in the movies, right. He wants photography
to be like a hobby for everybody instead of a
thing you need professionals to do. And obviously George Eastman
is wildly successful. But Louis la Prince sees this paper
film and thinks, aha, I don't have to use glass plates,
and in fact, paper film is not ideal for the movies.
It's not translucence entirely, but it's a little bit translucent. Also,
(17:21):
it tends to catch fire because where you got to
put a bright light behind it to.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, movie quickly.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
That's a problem, but it works. The Prince is able
to build a movie camera and it's this beautiful mahogany
box with like brass hinges like in Williamsburg. They would
go crazy for this camera. He was an artist at
his heart, and in October of eighteen eighty eight, Louis
La Prince makes the first movies ever made. It's in
(17:51):
Leads where he's living. There's actually a few movies he
seems to make on this one day. And one of
the movies survives and is in fact on YouTube. Oh
so I put a link in the note. So here,
let's watch the movie. K you want to count us in?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Okay, So it's called Roundhay Garden. See it's eighteen eighty eight.
The Prince, All right back, get your big bag of popcorn.
You know, relax really, you know, put yourself in the
mood of watching a movie. Let's hit play in three
to one play and it's over. That's it. That's it.
(18:26):
It's two seconds long. Two seconds long, the very first movie. Yeah,
it makes it super hard to like show this at
a movie theater. Imagine the movie phone, you know, round
hey garden scene shows at two o'clock, two o'clock in
ten seconds, two o'clock in twenty seconds.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
But think of how many tickets you can see.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Oh my god, you could pack it.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
So okay, so let's actually talk for a second about
what's going on in the movie. Yeah, yea yeah, how
many people as four people on the screen.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
They were awkwardly, I would say, standing there, except it's
as if Louis la Prince I, who assume is behind
the camera. Yeah, told them I'm about to hit record.
I don't know what he would have called it. I'm
about to start the machine.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Move around, yeah, yeah, just start start doing something. So
there's a main guy who's sort of walking directly the
camera and then starts circling around.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
That's Adulf. That's Louis Son okay.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And there's in the back an old guy with a
top hat who is dancing. I guess he's doing a
little jig.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yes, so that is Adulf's grandfather. Luisla Prince's father in law.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And then there's a couple other people who are just like,
there's a woman and they're just sort.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Of like, yeah, it's a jiggling a bit, a family
friend and Louise's mother in law. But here's the thing,
you're mocking it.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
We're watching the Invention of movies and the first time
it's like that first photograph record that Mary had a
little lamb. The moment you see two seconds of this
and I assume it was longer this ise.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I think it was originally longer.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
This is like what lasted, But even at two seconds,
you can see exactly what it's going to be. You're like, oh,
I can have a whole scene here, and I can
see people's faces, and I can see movement, and I
can see cities I've never seen before. Like the dream
that he had of bringing people together is obvious as
we make fun of people from a undred and fifty
(20:12):
years ago on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, and you know, this is just a guy in
a little workshop in Leeds with a few people, like
you know, you talked about rooting for the loan inventor.
This is, at least at this moment, the victory of
the loan inventor.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
For a moment. Savor it because there is someone else
who's going to come back into the story, Thomas Alva Edison,
And we'll have his part of the story after the
break and we're back. We watched the round Hay Garden
(21:04):
scene four hundred more times.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Let's get back to Edison now. Okay, when we left Edison,
it was early eighteen eighty eight and he had just
told on one of his boys, one of his muckers,
to go off and invent moving pictures. The guy he
told to invent moving pictures was named William Kennedy Laurie Dixon.
(21:27):
Four names, four names, and he liked all four. Yes,
he would sign things w k l D. So a
little full of himself, but like also a hustler and
an important player in the movie story as we'll see.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
So.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
WKLD grew up in England and when he was like
eighteen or nineteen, he actually wrote to Edison to ask
for a job, as I'm sure thousands of young hustlers did.
Edison says no, But WKLD comes to the US anyway
and eventually does get a job working for Edison shows Moxie, Yeah,
he's got Moxie and he is an engineer, but he
(22:03):
also is Edison's personal photographer.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Of course Edison has a personal photographer, which you know
at this point in Edison's life, like he realizes that
he is a brand.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah, and maybe the most famous person in America, Like
it's it's we got to make it clear, like he's
not just like nerds love him, like everybody knows who
he is.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, but I say the word brand because he uses
that to get what he wants, to make progress, to
get money, to get investment, to get his inventions out there,
and to win. Like he knows that it's good for
business that whenever something's invented in the middle of the night,
he can step in at the last minute and have
his personal photographer take a photo of him next to it,
(22:45):
right by William Kennedy Laurie Dixon. And you know, this
is part of the reason Edison assigns him moving pictures.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Right. The kid knows how to use a camera. So
remember this is eighteen eighty eight. By this point, le
Prince has been working for like eight years on the camera.
Just a few months after Edison assigns WKLD to work
on moving pictures, Edison writes a letter to his patent.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Lawyers which I'm contractually obligated to read everything that you.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Tell me to read, so please read it.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Okay. I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for
the eye what the photograph does for the ear, which
is the recording and reproduction of things in motion and
in such form as to be both cheap, practical, and convenient.
And there's like a little drawing of a machine in
the letter.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yes, although that machine is not going to work at all.
It's in fact, when the movie camera is invented, it's
not going to be that.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
It was the poetry of this that was going to
get Thomas Edison ahead. So he has not invented the movies,
but he's written a thing that kind of sounds like
maybe he did. And when he does, he can say.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, I wrote this beautiful paragraph right, Yes, yes it is.
It is a legal gambit, and I just want to
note part of the reason I want to talk about
this letter is it's October eighth, eighteen eighty eight. The
day that Roundey Garden scene that first movie was filmed
is October oreenth, eighteen eighty eighth, same week, so it's
(24:15):
not not legal precedence. La Prince already has the patent,
but just the vibe of simultaneity is what I want
to capture here, right, Like, it is extraordinary how much
everybody is working on.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
This, and Edison's first instinct is to get his lawyers
to lock it down, put it on paper, file it.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yes, And what Edison is applying for isn't even a patent.
It's this thing called a caveat that is just like, well,
I'm not ready for a patent yet, but I got
the idea, and so if anybody else tries to get
in on it, you got to come check with me.
And you know, you were talking a minute ago about
Edison being aware of his own brand and that's serving him,
and it certainly did for sales and for raising capital,
(24:55):
but it also served him in intellectual property. Like there's
a pretty compelling argument that like, in the same way
that you know, Lebron James can get away with committing
fouls and not getting called the way ordinary players would
because he's famous. And it's like, oh, surely Lebron James
wouldn't commit that foul, Like Edison could do that with patents.
(25:17):
Right if a bunch of people have competing claims, which
is often the case because simultaneous invention. Edison will get
the benefit of the doubt. Because he's Edison, He's the
most famous inventor in the world. Of course, he must
have really invented this thing.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, and La Prince back in his backyard shed has
to know this, that he is not the most famous
guy in this race. And so his motivation is I
need to make it work, and I need to show
it to people that it actually works, not just written
on a piece of paper like Thomas Edison did.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yes, yes, like everything gets litigated, right. Everything is a race,
and so the way you win is not just in
court with patents. It's being first to market, being first
to show the thing, being first to go in a
room and say, hey, look, I built this movie camera.
Here is a movie. No one has ever made a
movie before. And so La Prince, Yes, he has built
(26:09):
his camera and made his movie and has his petance.
Now he needs to show it to the world.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Okay, the battle is set. The lone inventor versus the
most famous man in America, the little guy versus the
industrial invention machine. Oh, this would make a great movie.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, if they existed yet, go on, Loui's going to
go to New York, right, He's going to have his
premiere in Edison's backyard, basically. But first, as you may
recall from the beginning of today's show, he's going to
go visit his brother in Dijon in France. And it's
not exactly clear why, you know, maybe he just wanted
to see him, but it is the case that Louis
(26:46):
had some money problems. There was an inheritance, like a house.
I think that they'd inherited from their mother, and so
maybe there's some money situation.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Classic going to argue with the fantastic Classic. So he
goes to see his brother in.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Dijon, gets on a train to Paris, disappears, is never
seen again. And let's just do that New York's on
headline one more time.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
You know, I could do it forever. The kinetograph Edison's
latest and most prizing device, pure motion, recorded and reproduced.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And then Lizzie sees that headline and thinks, Thomas Edison
stole my idea and killed my husband.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
With five pounds of peacock feathers.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
That's what the twenty five pounds of Marlon.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Was Lizzy at the time because this has taken over
her husband's life and now he's missing, and sees this
like she has got to be so full of rage.
They do have the film though.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yes they have the film, They have the camera, it's
there in leads, and he has a patent right. So
it seems like a robust legal case. It's obviously not
going to bring her husband back, but at least you know,
you could whatever, have his Yeah, have his name, makes
your move. But but there is this element of intellectual
(28:01):
property law at the time that is devastating for Lizzie
making this case, and that is this, if someone is missing,
there is eight years of waiting period before they can
be declared dead. And while they're missing, their property, including
their intellectual property, is in this kind of limbo right,
(28:22):
So Louis la Prince owns this intellectual property and maybe
he's still alive as far as the law is concerned.
So in this key moment in the development of movies,
Lizzy can't do anything. She can't bring a case because
it's not her intellectual property to sue with.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Do we think at this point that Edison has seen
the film? I mean he has his fingers and everything.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, I mean he would have probably seen the patent, right,
somebody who worked for him would very likely have seen
the patent, But as far as I know, not the film.
The film is there in the UK. The big moment
was going to be the New York premiere. And remember
this is just like less than a year before that
he has disappeared. So Edison has probably not seen the
film or the movie camera, and so Lizzie can't do
much during this waiting period.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Tell you who can do something? Thomas Edison's invention factory
never sleeps. They've already started to work on and they
are going to.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Be really yes, yes, And so you'll remember William Kennedy,
Lourie Dixon, our man fra Guess on the job and
you know WKLD. He's keeping up with all this stuff
that people are doing, with all the patents, and in
fact tries to do like a movie projector style movie
at some point, but can't get that to work. The
film just isn't whatever good enough or clear enough, and
(29:31):
so it comes up with this other model instead, which
is instead of projecting the movie onto a screen onto
the wall, they build a little box with a little
hole in the top, and you look down into the
box like one person, and you see a little short
movie of like, you know, a strong man lifting weights
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And actually, you know this fits with Thomas Edison and
his strength as a businessman. Right. He wasn't looking at
the movies as some sort of artistic form that was
going to bring the world together. Kumbai yah. He was like, well,
how do I put something in a box? Get someone
to put a nickel inside, We'll put my face on it.
We'll put it in Coney Island, and eventually, like, I
(30:09):
will have so many nickels. I have a big room
filled with them in West Orange.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
To dive into them like a not very rich scrooge
Nick Duck.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So many nickels, right, And Edison does, in fact do this.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
He builds his little money machine and people line up
because it is this miraculous thing, moving pictures, and now
he actually needs movies to show. It's like, oh no,
we got the box. People are lighting up. We got
to show up new movies so they'll give us more nickels.
And in fact, Dixon oversees construction of this movie studio.
I think the world's first movie studio, although other people
(30:41):
are working on things, and it's this it's this weird
building and it's there in West Orange, right by the lab,
and it's optimized to get sunlight, right, because early cameras
aren't very good. Early lighting is still not that good.
They need a lot of light. So they do two
things with this building that are just delightful. One they
have like a hinged roof so they can open it
up and let the sunshine in. And two it's on
(31:03):
a big like turntable so they can turn it so
that the sunlight can come in.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It's like a retractable roof stadium.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, crossed with like one of those restaurants at the
top of a tall building that spins around. Have you
ever been to one of those? I've never been to it.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I have been to them. They moved very slowly. They
moved very slowly. You know. I would pay a nickel
just to like be in the studio and have it
rotate with the sun.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Oh for sure. Yeah, yeah, now you've invented the studio tour.
Early films include Blacksmith Scene, Oh It's a good one,
Washing the Baby, who Oscar Nominee, and The Boxing Cats.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
No Way, What are the first movies. Ever is a
cat video.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, and like this has a very kind of whatever
I don't know Instagram TikTok vibe, Like Washing the Baby
is tradwise Blacksmith. I feel like there must be Blacksmith influencers.
So so Edison's in the movie business, but he doesn't
have it to himself for long, right, This is the
simultaneous invention thing again. Right, Over the next few years,
more and more people are developing their own movie cameras,
(32:01):
making their own movies. But of course Edison is Edison
has you know, as many lawyers as he wants at
his disposal, and so he's what is I guess the
obvious thing, decides to basically sue everybody else out of existence. Sure,
so sure, clear the field. And so, you know, the
first few companies he goes and Susie like, oh it's Edison, Okay, bye, whatever,
(32:24):
We're done. But then he gets this one company that
is doing pretty well. It's called the Mutoscope Company. And
by this point that company, which is Edison's main rival,
is run by one William Kennedy Lori Dixon.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Wuk l D who left Edison I assue left, who
left to go to go to a competitor. Y Ah,
and like this is classic. This is a classic moment
in the age of innovation. Right, It's not just ideas,
it's this process knowledge of people who know how to
do something and immediately are valuable and can go and
start their own businesses or get hired by someone else.
(33:01):
I mean we saw this at the dawn of Silicon Valley, rightly. Yes,
it's not as you know, the guy who led the
invention of the transistor, Williams shot it's not even starting
his big company, right, Shockley Semiconductor. It's his employees, the traders.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
And traders eight work.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yeah, they leave, they start their own company and then
they go start Intel. Like this is how it works.
This is simultaneous invention and taking those ideas and really
seeding them to a bunch of different companies and competitors. Yes.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yes, And and in fact, the mutoscope machines, the machines
that A. Dixon's company is making, are quite like Edison's machines, right,
They're they're not projecting on a screen, there're still you
look into a little box. And in the UK, the
mutoscope machines were known as the what the Butler Saw machines,
(33:55):
because their most famous movie was you look into this thing,
and you have the point of view like you're looking
through an old school people like a little key lock,
you know, and what you see as a woman taking
off some of her clothes, some of her clothes, some
of her clothes. And this was a smash hit. And
so yeah, of course of core porn, yes, which, by
the way, so now we're like whatever, a few years
(34:16):
into the history of movies, not a decade into the
history of movies, and you have like cat videos and
softcore porn. So you can basically shut it down now,
no more innovation. That's it.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
That's the thing that drives innovation, frankly right.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, classic classic story of video, right, the porn industry
and like video, the internet, also the Mutoscope. It turns
out so okay, Edison sues Mutoscope. Mutoscope does not roll over.
They hire their own lawyers, and their lawyer's legal strategy
is to prove that Edison was not the first person
(34:51):
to invent moving.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Pictures, because they know who was, louis La Prince. Yes,
louis La Prince did it. Patent is right there, you know,
for everybody to see. And so he's not there, but
his patent is, his patent is, and.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
The Mutoscope lawyers get in touch with Lizzie, you know,
Louise's wife, and Adulph his son, and you know, so
like this to them feels like their moment, right, Like
there are just two people. There's no way they're going
to be able to go up against Edison. But Mutoscope
is a real company with revenues, and so Adolf gets
(35:25):
ready to testify. He goes back to England. He gets
the camera, the machine, he takes the round hey garden
scene and like pace the images onto like you know, board,
so they can have it in court. He gets like
sworn statements from people who were working with him.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
And the family of lou the Prince could finally get
this confrontation in a court room with I assume reporters
there the trial of the century, like it's the.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Edison right, you know it's going to be in the
papers because Edison is involved, right, So the trial happens.
Adolph in fact gets called to testify and the Mutoscope
lawyer asks him, do you have any films from this
camera that your father invented? And Adolph you know, shows
the pictures of the round he garden scene, which you
remember he was in it and his grandparents were in it.
(36:09):
And then the lawyer says, when were these photographs taken?
And Adolph says October eighteen eighty eight, which again is
you know, well before Edison had his claim. And then
the lawyer for Edison, like I guess in cross examination,
says to Adolf, well, there's no way you can prove
(36:30):
that October eighteen eighty eight is when the movie was filmed.
These are just pictures. And Adolf says, I can fix
the date exactly by the fact that my grandmother, who
remembers in the movie, by the fact that my grandmother
died on the twenty fourth of October eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Courtroom gasps.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
And yet, and yet it doesn't really worked out for
Adulf and Lizzie. This is the high point for them.
But you know, it becomes clear that, you know, the
Mutoscope lawyers are not there to validate the claim of
Louis le Prince. In fact, at some level, they don't
want like, you know, La Prince's ears. They don't want
(37:11):
a dolphin Lizzy to be able to like take away
the movies from them, So they want to like do
enough to undermine Edison, sure, but not so much that
they undermine themselves, Like they don't even want to see
the camera. And then there are these details where like
louis Us patent was for the sixteen lens camera and
not the one lens camera, and they don't want to
know about that, and so ultimately, ultimately a dolphin Lizzie
(37:35):
don't get the victory they want.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
And afterwards people aren't putting up statues to Louis La
Prince and putting them in the textbooks as like this
huge inventor, I mean, he kind of gets lost to time.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
He gets totally lost. And the court case, as intellectual
property cases tend to do, goes on forever, right, goes
on for years and years, back and forth. The end
of this Edison versus Mutoscope case is this very strange
to me outcome, and that's this. The two companies get
to keep their intellectual property and everybody else gets sort
(38:07):
of wiped away. It's like, okay, you two whatever, We're
not going to sort it out between YouTube, but you
two are good. You guys can keep making movies. And
so what Edison and Mutoscope decide to do since there's
only two. What do you do if it's whatever nineteen
hundred ish, You form a trust. You're like, you know what,
we could just compete each other down to bits, or
we could just tim up and not have to compete
(38:29):
and share all those nickels.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Edison's got like a playbook. Either invent it first, or
you patent it first, or you get the caveat, or
you sue everybody. And you know, if it looks like
you're not gonna win, you just say, let's get together, like,
let's dominate this industry. And in this particular case, they
dominated the technology they were making the movies. They had
this like vertical corporation.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
They were invented, yes, and you know they really lock
down not just the cameras and the projectors, but the
whole industry. They actually bring in to their trust. It's
called the Motion Picture Patents Company is the official name.
They bring into their trust. Kodak, because Kodak is making
the film right, and they already have their studio, so
the actors are working for them. And this Edison Trust dominates,
(39:16):
just dominates the early movie business. And delightful twist, this
dominance helps to create Hollywood. So Hollywood the place I mean, yes,
but also like Hollywood, the idea, the movie industry as
we know it. Okay, so here's what happens.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
So the people who.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Are buying from the Edison Trust are theater owners, right,
They are not in the cartel. They are the ones
paying the cartel.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And they are not like big highly capitalized ventures, right.
These are like basically immigrant hustlers, guys who are like
in the fur business a year ago.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah, they're real estate guys. Right. They own a.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, maybe maybe maybe they have like a vaudeville theater, right,
and they realize, like, oh sad having to pay the actors.
We could just put a movie up there and people
will still pay, right, And so they really come to
resent this Edison Trust.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Well, of course, because like, buying from a cartel is terrible.
You have no negotiation feed. They can lock you out
of the business. They can put you out of business
if you don't buy what they're asking for.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, it's great to be a cartel. It's terrible to
be the customer of a cartel, exactly right, Not only
because they can jack up prices, right, but also because
they can sell you a crap product. You know, like
what you're not gonna buy from anybody else. They don't
have any incentive to make a better movie. Yeah, And
that's an unappreciated danger of a monopoly, right, is that
(40:36):
we always talk about the money. Oh, I'm gonna have
to pay more for this monopoly, But it's really that
there's no reason for the monopoly to innovate, Like why
would the movies have to be better, longer, or nicely lit,
you know, or something beyond what the butler saw. You
don't have to innovate at all. Yeah, And I mean conversely,
like the other side of the same coin is like
competition is core to why a market economy is great, Yes, right,
(41:01):
Like you want many people firms competing to make something better.
You want five different companies, twenty different companies trying to
make a better movie to sell it to the movie theaters.
And when there's a cartel, you don't have that. So
how do they get to Hollywood?
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Right? So just distance from the New York cartoon.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Well, so it's part of it. Right. So, So here's
what happens. The theater owners who are the ones getting
jammed by the cartel, They start making their own movies.
But doing it on the slide. There are these stories
where like they'll like have an Edison camera there, but
then have secretly like one of the band cameras or
a camera from Europe or something on the side. And
(41:41):
you know, part of trying to avoid the Edison Trust,
which is headquartered in you know, New Jersey, New York,
is let's go far away, Like how far away can
you get? And the answer in the United States. Just
look at a map continental the United States, southern California
and plenty of that sun they need. Yeah, so right,
so it's not just Edison. We should be clear, Like
(42:02):
there were a few other things. There was plenty of sun.
Land was cheap, so you could, you know, buy your
studio lot for cheap. There were lots of different landscapes
so you could fit like your western out of the desert.
You could go to the mountains, you could go to
the beach. And they weren't just hiding right like they
were suing. There were anti trust laws and you know,
we're into the kind of nineteen hundreds and nineteen ten's
(42:23):
at this point, and this is a moment when finally
the anti trust laws that have been on the books
for decades are finally starting to be enforced in a
meaningful way. And there are these Supreme Court decisions in
nineteen seventeen and nineteen eighteen that say, oh yeah, it's
the Edison Trust is a trust, and we have these
anti trust laws. You can't have a cartel. It's right
(42:45):
there in the name, it's right there in the day.
And they break up the trust. And that's basically the
end of Edison in the movie business and the beginning
of Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
We still have one threat to pick up what happened
to Luis le Prince.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yes, and we're gonna tell the rest of the Edison
story in just a minute. That's the end of the ads. Robert,
(43:24):
give us an outline for the rest of the show.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Okay, three things we have left to do today. One,
figure out what to make of Loui la Prince and
Edison in the movies, like what's our lesson here? Number Two,
we're going to do the true crime thing. We're going
to figure out who killed Louis la Prince. It's good, good.
And three we're going to end our Edison series and
talk about the end of Edison's life.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Okay, So first on that list is what to make
of Edison and the Prince in the movies, like, what
is this story really about? And on this one, I
want to go do Schumpeter. I thought it was Shumpeter,
but I looked it up. It's Schumpeter.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Joseph Schumpeter. Wow, I've never said it like that. Yeah,
Joseph Schumpeter also known as Schumpeter in Silicon Valley where
they love this guy creative destruction if you've heard that.
That's what he came up with and is still cited
to this day. The idea that in order for progress
to be made, big companies often fail and young, scrappy
(44:23):
companies come up to take their place.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
And so for Schumbacher, the sort of key hero was
the entrepreneur. And there is this thing he wrote in
nineteen eleven that distinguished the inventor from the entrepreneur, talked
about how they're different. And I think that distinction is
the key for me and understanding this story and understanding
Louis La Prince definitely the inventor, and Edison, who is
(44:50):
clearly an inventor but is also an entrepreneur. So read
Robert read if you would, this little thing that I pulled.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
It's quote in time. As long as they are not
carried into practice, inventions are economically irrelevant, and to carry
an improvement into effect is a task entirely different from
the inventing of it, and a task moreover require ring
entirely different kinds of aptitudes. It is therefore not advisable,
and it might be downright misleading to stress the element
(45:18):
of invention as much as many writers do. It's not
about the invention, and it's interesting like that last part
as much as many writers do. Right, So he's sort
of distinguishing here between what's happening with technology, with the economy,
and how do we tell the story right, And he's
saying the story, the writing of it is like the invention,
(45:39):
of course, the person discovering the thing, but he's also
saying like, that's only one piece of it, and making
the invention a thing in the world, a thing in
the world that people will pay for, is hugely important
and super underrated.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
And you know, if you map that idea to this story,
you can say, well, so what that Luis La Prince
came up with the movie camera first, right, everybody was
working on it.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Someone was going to do it in the next year
or yeah, somebody was going to do it.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
What's important is, in Schiumbader's words, carrying it in to practice,
making it a thing in the world. You know, would
the Prince have done that if he had survived? Maybe,
but maybe not. Right, Like that part is hard. He
didn't have any money. We do know that Edison was
really good at.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Making things real branding, the manufacturing, the money part, the lawyers,
the patents, the building of the studio that could rotate
feels like the kind of practical, like we need to
solve a problem and we need to film in New Jersey,
and this is what we've come up with.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yeah, I mean, go back to that letter that you
read that he wrote in October of eighteen eighty eight
when he just started working on this. You know, in
the very first sentence he says, yeah, we want to
invent whatever a camera. But then he says in that
for sentence, a camera in such a form as to
be both cheap, practical and convenient. Right, Like first sentence,
He's not like, oh, movies going to change the world.
(47:03):
He's like, I want to make a thing that is cheap,
practical and convenient. That is the entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
This actually reminds me of the discussion we're having today
about China, because right, there's a whole thing about well China,
like do they really invent anything. We're in the United
States of America. We are the inventors. But what they
have is process knowledge. They have what Schumpeter's talking about,
focusing on cheap, practical, and convenient applications of technology, and
(47:30):
through that constant iteration can often come out ahead without
the aha, lone inventor moment.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Yeah, fast follower? Is that fast follower? Is that what
they call that?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (47:40):
So think about Edison in this context, right, Like, he
didn't just want to invent the light bulb. He wanted
to deliver electric power to millions of people cheaply, you know,
at scale, and he did so. He was definitely an entrepreneur.
I mean, also he was a flawed entrepreneur, right, Like
he invented the phonograph. Unlike with this like phonograph, he
(48:01):
was way out in front and like was not the
first one to bring it to market because he got distracted.
He was the first one to build a big electric grid,
but bet on the wrong kind of current, right as
we talk about. But fundamentally he was an entrepreneur, and
I would argue that that's why he is so famous
(48:21):
as an inventor, right, because we love stories of inventors,
but we want stories of inventors who things get out
into the world. And so by being such a good entrepreneur,
Edison became the most famous inventor in history.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
This is where we will leave Edison for a moment,
and let's move to number two. Louis la Prince. Who
killed him? It was probably not Thomas Alva Edison.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
It was probably not Thomas Alva Edison. So for this one,
I go back to Paul Fisher, the guy who wrote
this relatively recent book about Louisla Prince. And when I
talked to Paul Fisher, we actually got into who killed
Louis le Prince in some detail. He has a pretty
compelling theory and it goes like this. The last thing
we know Louili Prince did was he went to visit
his brother.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
In Djon, in Dijon famous for their mustard.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yes, I guess.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
So.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
You know there was this inheritance, right, that was something
of an issue between them. The brother is the last
one ever to see him alive. And then after he disappears.
He's like, what should we do? Should we take out
ads in the papers? And you know, see if anybody's
seen him? And the brother says, no, no, I'm taking
out ads in the papers. Don't worry. But when Paul Fisher,
this author went back to look in the papers, no
(49:31):
ads and so like that one seems pretty compelling to me.
It was the brother was the brother probably because of money,
like boring, but boring is what you want, right, It's
like the Okham's rasor answer.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
And I guess if Thomas Edison were listening to this show,
he'd be like, yeah, of course, like I have lawyers,
I don't need to kill people.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
That's right. That's why you get rich, that's why you
become Thomas Edison, so you could take their ideas without
killing them.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
So that's the end of the movie story. And it
seems like maybe this is the end of the series, right,
so let's just do the rest of his life, Like
what is left for Thomas Edison to do at this point?
Speaker 3 (50:08):
I mean it's interesting, right because he's in his forties
when he gets into the movie business, like prime of
his life, and he certainly doesn't feel like he's done
he's not done. He for decades after this, keeps working.
I mean, he's super famous, and he works on lots
of different things. He works on a new kind of battery,
(50:29):
still working on an electric car. He gets into the
cement business, the Edison Cement Works or something, and actually
pours these concrete houses in New Jersey as this dream
for the concrete house. I think you can still see
some of these houses. He tries like seventeen thousand different
plants looking for a domestic source of.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Rubber, rubber so you don't have to go to the Amazon.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah. Right, And this was like a national security concern
at the time, like I don't know, like rare earths
today or something, but bigger. But none of these I
mean like he makes some technical progress on them, but
none of them are like big breakthroughs. He says, famous, right,
famous enough that remember like when he dies in nineteen
thirty one, the President of the United States declares this
national moment of mourning. But if we take by his
(51:13):
own measure, you know, his own measure was not incremental progress,
not the ideas for ideas themselves. It was things people
will pay for. It was things that become a big
thing in the world. In the second half of his life,
he doesn't have any big hits. But still you really
just have to step back and say, not only did
(51:34):
he invent all these things, he created at least three
industries entire transformative industries. Photograph in the recording industry.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
The movie business, the electric business, which is in everything.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
Yeah, like electricity was like the fundamental transformative technology of
the twentieth century. We can say Thomas Edison had a
very good run. I mean, without Thomas Edison you couldn't
have like two guys talking into microphones and calling it
a job.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang, our engineer is Sarah Bruguier,
and our showrunner is Ryan Dilly. I'm Jacob Goldstein and
I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another
episode of.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
Business History, a show about the history wait for it,
of business Robert Smith. As you know, there is nowhere
in Pushkin's office to make a video to make a
video podcast, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
We tried, and it was described as two gray men
in a gray.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Box and reasonably so fortunately for us.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
In an amazing.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Coincidence, literally down the hall from Pushkin's office, there is
the showroom of a company called Buzzy Space. This is
a company is where we're sitting right now. And what
they do is they design furniture and acoustic solutions that
make I'm reading here workplace is more comfortable, more creative,
and more fun.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
I would even say cozy. Their furniture is like sort
of curved and interesting colors and I guess keeps things quiet.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yes, honestly, I wish our office was this showroom. You
can find more at buzzy dot space. That's b u
z z I dot space.
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