History of color photography
Black and white photography history
Black and white photography requires only sensitivity to light, but color photography is much more complex because color photography requires a separate sensitivity to each of several primary colors. For example, red, blue and green of the spectrum.
Who was the first to photograph in color? Who discovered color photography in the history of color photography?
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In 1849, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel (1820-1891) in France is said to have succeeded in photographing the color spectrum but was unable to retain a permanent image.
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A decade later, the noted English physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) began to theorize about color photography, and in 1861 he demonstrated a system of color photography that involved photographing the same object with black and white film three times through a green, blue and red filter.
The resulting color photography image was produced by projecting the three photographs over one another on a screen using colored lights. The result was indeed a full color photographic image but it could not be fixed on paper, and the process was practical only with immobile objects. Still, Maxwell's demonstration pointed the way.
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