The first permanent colour photograph, that of a tartan ribbon, was taken on this day in 1861 by Thomas Sutton, a photographer who was working with Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist. It was a composite of three black and white pictures, each one taken through a red, green or blue filter. The resulting slides were then projected through three similarly filtered lenses resulting in a colour photograph.
Looking at the ease with which we now capture colour pictures and transmit them around the world in seconds it’s easy to forget that it was not that long ago news agencies were transmitting their wire photographs as colour separations, usually cyan, magenta and yellow – a process that relied on Clerk Maxwell’s discovery. Indeed even the latest digital camera relies on the separation method to capture light.
– thefactsite.com/ENCL
Photo Caption – The first colour photograph made by the three-color method suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855, taken in 1861 by Thomas Sutton. The subject is a coloured ribbon, usually described as a tartan ribbon –thefactsite.com
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