This two seconds of film is thought to be the very first motion picture, using Louis Le Prince's single-lens camera and Eastman's paper film. It features the earliest born (but not the oldest) person ever to be in a film, Sarah Robinson Whitley, who was born in 1816. She was also the first person featured in a motion picture to die, as she did so just ten days after this film was made on October 24, 1888. She was Louis Le Prince's mother-in-law.
Then there is the mystery surrounding Louis Le Prince's death/disappearance. He disappeared from a train in 1890, planning to make a trip to the United States to demonstrate his techniques. His body and luggage were never found, and legends surrounding his disappearance include the theory that Edison had him killed so that he could take credit for inventing the motion picture. A huge court battle ensued in the United States over that title and the right to collect royalties, first won by Edison against the Le Prince family, but then that court decision was overturned.
There was actually a book written on the subject of the disappearance of Le Prince and how the pioneers of cinema were involved in all kinds of backstabbing - "The Missing Reel". I recommend it as not the best book ever written, but about the only work in writing on the subject.
Then there is the mystery surrounding Louis Le Prince's death/disappearance. He disappeared from a train in 1890, planning to make a trip to the United States to demonstrate his techniques. His body and luggage were never found, and legends surrounding his disappearance include the theory that Edison had him killed so that he could take credit for inventing the motion picture. A huge court battle ensued in the United States over that title and the right to collect royalties, first won by Edison against the Le Prince family, but then that court decision was overturned.
There was actually a book written on the subject of the disappearance of Le Prince and how the pioneers of cinema were involved in all kinds of backstabbing - "The Missing Reel". I recommend it as not the best book ever written, but about the only work in writing on the subject.