|
Search By:
|
|
March 1899: Chasing Colours
In March of this year, Edward Raymond Turner, backed financially by racing owner F. Marshall Lee, patented a three-colour motion picture projection system. Turner, a photographer and chemist by trade, had worked on Frederic Ives' Kromskop camera which produced colour still images, and developed his idea on the basis of the discovery by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell that virtually all colours could be derived from a combination of the three primary colours, red, green and blue. Although both William Friese-Greene and William Norman Lascelles Davidson had previously filed patents for colour cinematography, Turner's was the first to (eventually) produce a working model.
Turner's camera filmed consecutive frames through red, green and blue filters on 38mm film, and the projector had a triple gate and lens which superimposed the three frames onto the screen. A rotating filter behind the gate ensured each frame was screened in its appropriate colour. Unfortunately, the process proved difficult and, initially, unsuccessful. Before a successful process would be developed from the nucleus of Turner's ideas, Lee would withdraw his funding, and Turner would die. [ADD]
Further Reading:
© 2009-2010 moviemoviesite.com