The Cine-Files Presents BUSINESS HISTORY: Thomas Edison and the Movie Murder Mystery

The Cine-Files

Steve Morris & John Rocha

Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hello Cine-Files fans! Pushkin Industries, a podcast company we are sure you are all familiar with, reached out to ask us to help with the launch of their new show Business History. Former Planet Money hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith examine the surprising stories of businesses big and small, bringing to life the greatest innovations, the boldest entrepreneurs and the craziest mavericks in the archives of commerce and finance.

They sent us an episode that fits with our conversations on movies. It details Thomas Edison's role in the mysterious disappearance of the true inventor of the movie camera. 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.

We hope you enjoy it. If you do, find more tales of founders, business success, and spectacular failures on Business History, available on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Sinophiles fans, it's John and Steve here, and today we're doing things a little bit differently and sharing a really fun episode of another podcast that we think you're going to enjoy.
0:18.0	It's called business history, and it's made by our friends over at Pushkin Industries.
0:22.2	Steve, you listen to a lot of Pushkin podcasts. Tell us more about this, and what is business history all about?
0:27.0	The reason I started listening to Pushkin podcast is because it was founded by Malcolm Gladwell, an author I've literally been listening to for 20 plus years, and that led me to a whole bunch of other podcasts, like
0:38.2	Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, A Life and Lyrics with Paul McCartney. These are
0:42.5	exciting podcasts. So when they reached out to us about business history, I got really, really
0:48.2	excited because I knew that Pushkin made very quality podcasts. And with the former Planet Money
0:53.4	host, Jacob Goldstein and
0:54.7	Robert Smith, it was obvious that this was going to be a great show. Now, business history
0:59.9	is all about telling the most exciting stories in the history of business. The great mavericks,
1:06.6	the incredible innovations, the huge surprises. But the reason that we're sharing this podcast right now
1:11.8	is that it actually is a movie story because they are telling the story about how Thomas Edison
1:16.9	claimed to invent the motion picture and then use that claim to dominate the early film
1:24.3	industry before the turn of the century. But this isn't just a story about one of the
1:28.1	greatest innovators in American history. This is a real crime murder mystery because it is also
1:34.0	the story of the real man who actually invented motion pictures. And that is Louis LePrinse,
1:40.1	who got onto a train in 1890 ready to tell the world about his invention, and he was never seen again.
1:49.5	Did Thomas Edison murder the real inventor of motion pictures in order to steal his patent and dominate the industry?
1:58.2	The only way for you to find out is by listening right now to business history with Jacob
2:03.7	Goldstein and Robert Smith from our very good friends over at Pushkin Industries.
2:08.3	All right.
2:08.9	Well, here's the murky story.
	...

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