- The film industry paid for his funeral and his gravestone, in Highgate Cemetary, bears a specially commissioned monument by Sir Edwin Luytens. His tombstone bears the inscription "The Inventor of Kinematography" and the patent number 10,131.
- He died a few minutes after giving a speech to a meeting of film distributors at the Connaught Rooms, Great Queen Street, London. It is reported that he had, in his pocket, 1s. 10d. (one shilling and tenpence), which was all the money he owned; after the First World War he and his family were poverty stricken, and his wife had left him in 1917.
- A pioneer of colour film processes, which he began to work on in the late 1890s. This work led to a call to testify in New York in 1910 in a case which broke the Edison's monopoly on film production and distribution. He was subsequently engaged in a prolonged court battle with Charles Urban over their rival colour processes - he won the court case but Urban's Kinemacolor was more financially successful.
- His work in film was overtaken by that of his European neighbours, led by Thomas A. Edison, Robert W. Paul, Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière and much of his pioneering work had been forgotten. He continued with his printing ideas, however, and registered a patent for photographic typesetting and a system for printing without ink, around 1895.
- With much of his money spent inventing new film processes he neglected his business affairs - in 1891 he was imprisoned after being sued for debt.
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