World's First Color Moving Pictures Discovered

BoxRec writes "The BBC is reporting newly-discovered films made by pioneer Edward Raymond Turner from London, who patented his colour process on 22 March 1899." When Turner invented his process, though, existing projection systems weren't up to it; to see the discovered footage, British archivists digitized the film for computer playback. When you're used to old films being both black and white and jerky, it's amazing to see it in color and (relatively) smooth.

Comments

Much Better Video Available

[eric2hill]

YouTube has a much better video than the one linked in the article that contains the process they went through and talks about the capture and projection intended by the inventor.

Re:The process was patented...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the reason Hollywood is in Hollywood? The film industry went as far away from Edison as they could in order to violate his motion picture patents.

Re:Incredible

[omnichad]

Sync is a problem because the objects are moving! The only way around it with B&W film is to have three simultaneous cameras shooting through color filters.

It wasn't just "investigated"....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

It was actually ADOPTED as the official US color broadcast standard by the FCC from 1950-1953.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-sequential_color_system

The main limitations of the CBS field-sequential system were the requirement for a rotating color filter wheel more than 2X the diameter of the picture tube. TV sets larger than 10" screen size or so became absolutely HUGE. The system was also incompatible with existing monochrome sets, which already had a substantial installed base by then.

Once RCA developed the all electronic system that eventually became "NTSC", the field sequential systems were relegated to niche applications such as the color cameras that flew to the moon on the Apollo landings. And yes, a similar system forms the heart of modern color DLP projectors.