The world’s oldest color movies were found by a curator at the National Museum in the UK. They were shot in 1899 by inventor Edward Raymond Turner in 1899.
The films were originally shot in black and white, then each frame was run through red, green, or blue gels. The process had to be reversed during projection to reveal the colors, but Turner had left a blueprint of the process, which allowed the museum’s team to reproduce the process using digital technology.
In the end, Turner’s process proved too complex and the end products would have been inferior to the chemical processes such as Kinemacolor (1909) and Technicolor, which eventually became standard in the film industry.
The collection includes footage of a goldfish in a bowl, Turner’s own children, a scarlet macaw, soldiers marching in Hyde Park. The very first shot is believed to be of traffic on London’s Knightsbridge.
The collection was donated to the Science Museum in 1937 by cinema pioneer Charles Urban, an American businessman who had moved to London. They were rediscovered when the collection was moved to Bradford about three years ago.
Michael Harvey, the museum’s creator of cinematography, assembled a team to try to reconstruct Turner’s methods. They were successful, proving that Turner’s technology did indeed work. They then dated the films by using the footage of Turner’s children, whose birthdates are known. Turner died in 1903 at the age of 29, so the museum’s researchers knew the films could not have been made after that date.
The footage has since been shown to the public at the Bradford Museum and a BBC documentary featuring the footage was broadcast in parts of Britain.
If you’d like to take a look at these extraordinary bits of film, go here
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