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.

And when you're used to modern video...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...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.

Re:Incredible

[EvilSS]

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.

Re:Incredible

[Skapare]

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).