Photography
Pictures from the past

The first colour photograph, 1861

Thomas Sutton collaborated with the theoretical physicist James Clerk Maxwell to take three separate exposures of a tartan ribbon through red, green and blue filters. The developed negatives were projected through separate magic lanterns, with the same coloured filters, on to a screen to create a single image at the Royal Institution in London and the principle of colour photography was born
The first colour photograph, 1861
A 1930s Vivex colour print made from James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton's original 1861 tri-colour negatives of a tartan ribbon. Sutton went on to invent the first single lens reflex camera and the first wide-angle lens while Maxwell's theories on electromagnetism, thermodynamics and colour are some of the most important in the history of physics
Illustration: Photograph: Thomas Sutton/ James Clerk Maxwell/ SSPL via Getty Images