Natural color film : what it is and how to use it (1937)

CHAPTER I WHAT IS COLOR FILM? Early Demonstrations From photography 's infancy, innumerable attempts have been made to produce photographs in color rather than in monochrome. During the year 1861 in the lecture theatre of London's Royal Institution, James Clerk Maxwell, physicist, demonstrated to a breathless audience how it could see pictures in color. From three photographs of a piece of colored ribbon — one red, one green, and one blue — he made three lantern slides. By means of three projectors, each with a filter of the same color as that used in taking the negative that he had in that projector, he projected a colored picture of the piece of ribbon. Maxwell's demonstration formed the basis of what is known as the "additive process" of color photography. It utilizes a simple black and white print, and places appropriate filters between the film and the screen, virtually adding color to the shadow of the black and white image. With modern equipment this process renders good color reproduction, but it is not altogether satisfactory. Eight years later, in 1869, a Frenchman named Louis Ducos du Hauron published a most extraordinary book, "Les Couleurs En Photographie ", which outlined prac — 19 —