Years before Edison or the Lumiere brothers had a working prototype, a French inventor shot the world’s first moving pictures. Then, days before he was set to unveil his invention to the world, Louis Le Prince and all his luggage vanished from a train without a trace.

This episode follows Le Prince from his childhood in Louis Daguerre’s studio to the Roundhay Garden Scene of 1888, then into one of history’s most consequential unsolved mysteries. We weigh the theories behind his disappearance, the patent wars that buried his legacy, and what his story reveals about why surviving an idea matters as much as having it.

• How a childhood beside photography pioneer Daguerre shaped an artist-scientist inventor
• The flawed 16-lens camera, the parallax problem, and the single-lens breakthrough
• The Roundhay Garden Scene shot October 14, 1888 at around seven frames per second
• His 1890 disappearance near Dijon, with luggage and blueprints gone too
• Competing theories from Edison assassination to drowning, and son Adolphe’s later courtroom defeat and death