Image: Tartan Ribbon

Description: Tartan Ribbon, photograph taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. Considered the first durable colour photographic image, and the very first made by the three-colour method Maxwell first suggested in 1855. Maxwell had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon three times, each time with a different colour filter (red, green, or blue-violet) over the lens. The three photographs were developed, printed on glass, then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the same colour filter used to photograph it. When superimposed on the screen, the three images formed a full-colour image. Maxwell's three-colour approach underlies nearly all forms of colour photography, whether film-based, analogue video, or digital. The three photographic plates now reside in a small museum at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the house where Maxwell was born.
Title: Tartan Ribbon
Credit: Scanned from The Illustrated History of Colour Photography, Jack H. Coote, 1993. ISBN 0-86343-380-4.
Author: James Clerk Maxwell (original photographic slides) ; scan by User:Janke.
Permission: Public domain
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No