It ’s been 150 geezerhood since Scottish Physicist James Clerk Maxwell express off the world ’s first colour exposure at a Royal Institution talking to in London . His discovery is incredible but , technically , it should n’t have worked .
Best live for develop classic electromagnetic hypothesis and demonstrate that electricity , magnetism and light are all permeutations of the electromagnetic sphere , James Clerk Maxwell ’s inquiry in optics go him to hypothesize the three - color method in 1855 . The three - color method acting is based around the three types of color - sensing cone in the human eye : ruby , green or profane . Maxwell figured that the human eye could be arse around into seeing a full color moving picture if three slides of the appropriate colouration in the right porportions were overlay .
To show this burden , he and his assistant make the composite picture of the tartan ribbon you see above from three monochrome range , each filtered for a specific color . The only problem was that the emulsion that he used to fascinate the monochrome range of a function was really only reactive to blue lighting . The green light emulsion barely registered anything outside the blue - green spectrum and the crimson light emulstion did nothing at all . So how did he end up get a full - color image ? Turns out the ferric thiocyanate he used as the red filter let a turgid amount of ultraviolet light to pass through and red - dyed fabrics tend to reflect ultraviolet light as well as red . The red color he produced was not from the optic spectrum at all , instead he created a full people of color image from the ultraviolet illumination , blue - green , blue spectrums .

Maxwell succeeded in creating the world ’s first long-lasting color photograph — but for the improper cause . So glad natal day Color Photography , you ’re one of our favorite accidents .
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