World's First Color Moving Pictures Discovered

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World's First Color Moving Pictures Discovered

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 13, 2012 @01:09AM from the with-or-without-a-u dept.

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.

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Forgotten Silver by oneiros27 · 2012-09-13 01:18 · Score: 3, Funny

1899? That'd be even earlier than Colin McKenzie's film, which I believe was 1911 ... I'd have to rewatch Forgotten Silver to confirm it, though.

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1. Re:Forgotten Silver by Tablizer · 2012-09-13 06:28 · Score: 2
  
  Hurray color! Let's party like it's 1899!
  
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And when you're used to modern video... by jeffb+(2.718) · 2012-09-13 01:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

...it's jarring to see a still image stamped with "this content is not currently available for your device". Nice illustration of 113 years of progress, BBC.
1. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by rolfwind · 2012-09-13 02:14 · Score: 2
  
  Thought the same exact thing. Don't know whichidiot marked you as a troll. On an iOS device myself. Happens way too often.
2. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:40 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Funny... works fine on my Linux box :P
3. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by rolfwind · 2012-09-13 03:51 · Score: 2
  
  Didn't realize this was a flash issue, 90% of the time it's youtube just doing the run around to please content providers (i.e. on music videos - plays on atomic web brower with different user agent). Not that it matters, found a better and playable video around here of this story.
  Not sure I would call flash a "standard" though.
4. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by Skapare · 2012-09-13 05:11 · Score: 2
  
  Flash is an abomination. Video doesn't need client side programming. It just needs a decent player like mplayer and a video file in a standard format (like Dirac, Theora, or VP8).
  
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  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
5. Re:And when you're used to modern video... by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:21 · Score: 2
  
  those three examples are no more standard than flash!
Incredible by puddingebola · 2012-09-13 01:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's amazing. It's so amazing that I almost think the National Media museum is the victim of some kind of hoax. Reading about color in motion picture films, Wikipedia says hand colored films began in 1895 with Thomas Edison. This isn't hand painted though. Anyone with photography knowledge have an explanation?
1. Re:Incredible by EvilSS · 2012-09-13 01:32 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Looking at the clip it appears to use black and white film, but with a rotating color wheel front on the projector similar to DLP projectors today. I assume one was used in front of the camera as well. I would guess that syncing issues were probably what killed it.
  
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2. Re:Incredible by wonkey_monkey · 2012-09-13 01:45 · Score: 2
  
  Wikipedia says hand colored films began in 1895 with Thomas Edison. This isn't hand painted though. Anyone with photography knowledge have an explanation?
  Explanation for what? None of those things contradict the other.
  It looks to me (having not listened to the audio track) like it was shot through rotating red/green/blue filters, which results in some slightly psychadelic colour trails on moving objects but some remarkably clear full colour on still objects.
  
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3. Re:Incredible by mcgrew · 2012-09-13 01:51 · Score: 2
  
  rotating color wheel front on the projector similar to DLP projectors today
  That was one tech they investigated when trying to invent the color TV back in the 1940s.
  
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4. Re:Incredible by omnichad · 2012-09-13 02:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
5. Re:Incredible by 91degrees · 2012-09-13 02:55 · Score: 2
  
  Well, the basic principle of separating red, green and blue, using filters and black and white film had been known about for a few decades by that point. Mainly this was used for still images though. Quite easy to do if you have a fixed camera and a fixed scene. Simply swap the filters around and take three shots.
  
  this is a way to automate the process to speed it up to film speed.
6. Re:Incredible by jandrese · 2012-09-13 03:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Cyan/magenta/yellow is for subtractive systems, like print. This would use RGB because it is being effectively projected.
  
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7. Re:Incredible by Major+Bloodnok · 2012-09-13 03:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There are stunning turn of the 20C images of Russia done by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii at the Library of Congress using this process. He used three lantern projectors to display the pictures. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html Of course the great thing is we don't have the fading of color dyes like modern color film, so the color is as good now as it was when captured.
8. Re:Incredible by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:31 · Score: 2
  
  Or a color filter that rotates in some way. One way could be a strip of filter film in a loop (of some multiple of 3 frames) the same size as being shot (35mm ?) being rotated with a mechanism similar to the film transport mechanism. It just needs to syncronize the two film mechanisms together in the camera, and expose an extra marker somewhere to show where the start is. That or someone guesses the start later on through use of standard color chips in the slate. Once that is done, then it's just a matter of getting the projector synchronized. That would be a bit harder, but not all that much harder. If it can be started in-sync between film frames and color filters, and stay that way (not slip), then someone has to do it at just the start.
  
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  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
9. Re:Incredible by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:44 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  If projecting three colors, even if in different time phases, you use red, green, and blue. Since those are primaries, this does give the best color saturation. But it also has the downside of reducing exposure more than secondaries (a problem that still exists even for today's digital camera through the tiny array of color filters).
  
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  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
10. Re:Incredible by omnichad · 2012-09-13 04:47 · Score: 2
  
  And between the time that red is exposed and then green is exposed, fast moving objects have moved. You're getting a different picture. It's not about the pictures being lined up.
11. Re:Incredible by the_other_chewey · 2012-09-13 04:48 · Score: 2
  
  Color mixing is different with pigments than with light. In pigments, the primaries are red, yellow, and blue. In light it's cyan, magenta, and yellow.
  Ah crap. You should really tell display manufacturers, they've been doing it wrong for decades!
12. Re:Incredible by 91degrees · 2012-09-13 08:33 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  3 strip technicolor was actually smarter than that. It only used a single camera with two exposure surfaces. The image was split in two by a prism, with a green filter in front of one strip, a second strip that was only sensitive to a narrow frequency (in the blue range), and a third strip behind the blue strip and behind a red filter.
  
  Really ingenious. This means you're not trying to do the same camera operations at the same time with three separate cameras
13. Re:Incredible by mug+funky · 2012-09-13 12:41 · Score: 2
  
  nah, if you're able to build a pin-registered gate at all (and run it at 24 fps without destroying the film), you've already got the skills necessary to add a filter wheel at the same speed.
  the engineering in old film gear is just phenomenal. awe inspiring that they could make all this stuff work together.
  even the capstan-servo telecine machines of the 70s (and still today) are incredible. they could get 1200 feet of heavy film to move at _exactly_ the right constant speed to get exactly 576 lines per film picture height as it moved through the gate, illuminated by a CRT synced to a black video input, and could do it even while letting the user zoom in and out and rotate the picture by tweaking the scanning pattern of that CRT. the film could even be stopped and the picture would remain the same (live, not buffered in memory) because the CRT knew when to switch to different scanning to get the same output picture on a still frame.
  and it did this without so much as going out by a fraction of a pixel, and it could do it day in, day out, for decades with little maintenance and with rough jerks like me using it.
  maintenance was done by jiggling or re-seating the huge circuit boards. occasionally a (huge) capacitor would blow up.
  film techies are Gods of precision engineering.
Why are you surprised? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2012-09-13 01:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

They have digitized it for the computer. They might have also fixed the transition and jerkiness. They should digitize the old black and white footage and apply the same techniques to see if the (relative) smoothness is a side effect of the digitization or not.

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1. Re:Why are you surprised? by DarwinSurvivor · 2012-09-13 01:52 · Score: 2
  
  Allow "bbci.co.uk" and "bbcimg.co.uk" in no-script.
Much Better Video Available by eric2hill · 2012-09-13 01:32 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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1. Re:Much Better Video Available by Tapewolf · 2012-09-13 01:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  I was going to provide the original link to the National Media Museum (which for the curious is here: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/LeeAndTurner.aspx ) ...but it's the same video anyway.
  What intrigues me is that they apparently blew it to 35mm first instead of going straight to digital.
2. Re:Much Better Video Available by eric2hill · 2012-09-13 02:31 · Score: 2
  
  I thought the same thing. I would imagine they already had equipment to deal with 35mm film, and it was easier to transfer it to 35mm to feed that equipment rather than retrofitting the equipment to take a larger source.
  I'm surprised they MANUALLY advanced each frame through the little shutter contraption. Don't any of these guys have a bag of Legos they could automate that process with???
  
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  LOADING...
  READY.
  RUN
3. Re:Much Better Video Available by Tore+S+B · 2012-09-13 02:31 · Score: 2
  
  If they had been able to scan the originals, that might yield a quality improvement - but there are so many things I'd love to try out with the raw materials.
  I would be very interested in seeing what digital image processing might be possible to use - if one could mangle the three temporally separate frames into a luminance signal and a chrominance signal which interpolates using motion-compensation derived from luminance, that might temper the rainbow effect somewhat - and triple the temporal resolution!
  
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4. Re:Much Better Video Available by DerekLyons · 2012-09-13 04:45 · Score: 2
  
  What intrigues me is that they apparently blew it to 35mm first instead of going straight to digital.
  They explain that in the video, his film was not 35mm but 35mm equipment is standard and common. Thus it was cheaper and easier to transfer it to 35mm and then perform the restoration/digitization rather than building/adapting equipment and software for a one-off project.
5. Re:Much Better Video Available by Skapare · 2012-09-13 04:48 · Score: 2
  
  I'm still looking for a genuine movie FILE, not some flashy thingy meant to frustrate people from saving it.
  
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  now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
copyright? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 01:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wait its only been 113 years? Can I view that content without worrying about being sued by MPAA?
The process was patented... by lurvdrum · 2012-09-13 01:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

if this had been in 2012, he wouldn't have patented a film process but instead followed Apple (and others) by patenting "The idea of colour moving pictures displayed to an audience" and his descendents would now be suing Hollywood for 15 gazillion dollars.
1. Re:The process was patented... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-13 02:13 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
2. Re:The process was patented... by SolitaryMan · 2012-09-13 04:49 · Score: 2
  
  Because the story has absolutely nothing to do with Apple or patents, and yet, GGP managed to find a way to bash Apple here. It's getting old.
  
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It wasn't just "investigated".... by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-09-13 03:30 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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Second, actually by ThatsNotPudding · 2012-09-13 05:22 · Score: 3, Funny

He made one even earlier of a mouse piloting a steamboat, but that one was lost in a mysterious fire...