History of color photography

• Also in France in 1900, Georges Melies (1861-1938) and Charles Pathe (1863-1957) used a mechanical stencil to create a precursor to colored motion pictures.

• In 1912, the German chemist Hans Fischer (1881-1945) discovered that just as the silver compounds in black and white film reacted to light, other chemicals responded differently to various colored lights.

• In the United States, Helmut Kalmus founded the Technicolor Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His process utilized a film that was multi layered, with each layer sensitive to a different color. He first produced a two-color motion picture film that was used in 1917.

• At the same time, the Eastman Kodak Company was experimenting with various color processes using filters similar to the ones in Maxwell's demonstration 50 years earlier.

• In 1932, Technicolor succeeded in creating the first actual full-color motion picture film, which was used for Walt Disney's animated short Flowers and Trees in that same year. The first full-length Technicolor feature was Becky Sharp (1935).

• In 1935, the first practical full-color film for still photography, a positive transparency film, was developed by Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky and licensed to Kodak. Marketed under the name Kodachrome, it remained the industry standard for over 60 years. Agfa in Germany produced a similar film in 1937, and Kodak introduced Kodacolor, a color negative film, in 1941.