The Search for Colour

 

Although far more people could now take photographs, for most of  the first half of the twentieth century photography really meant pictures in black and white. Everyone now expects to have colour prints from their holiday a few hours after returning home, but 60 years ago a skilled photographer would take several days, at great expense, to get one colour image on to paper.  Reaching today’s position called for tremendous re­search – firstly to establish the best principle on which to base a system of colour photography, and secondly (even more difficult) how to put it into practice so that it was simple,  inexpensive and gave high quality results. Hundreds of systems for ‘natural colour photography’ were put forward, often by fakers and fraudsters. Fortunes were lost trying to launch processes which only partly overcame problems and contained some fatal flaw. …

PDF: The Search for Colour