William Friese-Greene was a prolific English inventor and professional photographer. He was known as a pioneer in the field of motion pictures, having devised a series of cameras between 1888–1891 and shot moving pictures with them in London. He went on to patent an early two-colour filming process in 1905. Wealth came with inventions in printing, including phototypesetting and a method of printing without ink, and from a chain of photographic studios. However, Friese-Greene spent all his money on inventing, went bankrupt three times, was jailed once, and died in poverty.
An RG color model is a dichromatic color model represented by red and green primary colors. These can only reproduce only a fraction of the colors possible with a trichromatic color space, such as for human color vision.
Panchromatic emulsion is a type of black-and-white photographic emulsion that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. By extension, a panchromatic sensor is an image sensor sensitive to the whole visible spectrum. A panchromatic image is the resulting picture.
Charles Urban was an Anglo-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in British cinema before the First World War. He was a pioneer of the documentary, educational, propaganda and scientific film, as well as being the producer of the world's first successful motion picture colour system.
George Albert Smith was an English stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, inventor and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul. He is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short films from 1897 to 1903, which pioneered film editing and close-ups, and his development of the first successful colour film process, Kinemacolor.
With Our King and Queen Through India (1912) is a British documentary film. The film is silent and made in the Kinemacolor additive color process.
Color motion picture film refers both to unexposed color photographic film in a format suitable for use in a motion picture camera, and to finished motion picture film, ready for use in a projector, which bears images in color.
The Prizma Color system was a color motion picture process, invented in 1913 by William Van Doren Kelley and Charles Raleigh. Initially, it was a two-color additive color system, similar to its predecessor, Kinemacolor. However, Kelley eventually transformed Prizma into a bi-pack color system that itself became the predecessor for future color processes such as Multicolor and Cinecolor.
Dufaycolor is an early British additive colour photographic film process, introduced for motion picture use in 1932 and for still photography in 1935. It was derived from Louis Dufay's Dioptichrome plates, a glass-based product for colour still photography, introduced in France in 1909. Both Dioptichrome and Dufaycolor worked on the same principles as the Autochrome process, but achieved their results using a layer of tiny colour filter elements arrayed in a regular geometric pattern, unlike Autochrome's random array of coloured starch grains. The manufacture of Dufaycolor film ended in the late 1950s.
A field-sequential color system (FSC) is a color television system in which the primary color information is transmitted in successive images and which relies on the human vision system to fuse the successive images into a color picture. One field-sequential system was developed by Peter Goldmark for CBS, which was its sole user in commercial broadcasting. It was first demonstrated to the press on September 4, 1940, and first shown to the general public on January 12, 1950. The Federal Communications Commission adopted it on October 11, 1950, as the standard for color television in the United States, but it was later withdrawn.
Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.
Edward Raymond Turner was a pioneering British inventor and cinematographer. He produced the earliest known colour motion picture film footage.
Everyman is a modern play produced by Charles Frohman and directed by Ben Greet that is based on the medieval morality play of the same name. The modern play was first performed in 1901 on tour in Britain. It opened in the United States in 1902 on Broadway, where it ran for 75 performances, followed by tours over the next several years that included four Broadway revivals.
The history of film technology traces the development of techniques for the recording, construction and presentation of motion pictures. When the film medium came about in the 19th century, there already was a centuries old tradition of screening moving images through shadow play and the magic lantern that were very popular with audiences in many parts of the world. Especially the magic lantern influenced much of the projection technology, exhibition practices and cultural implementation of film. Between 1825 and 1840, the relevant technologies of stroboscopic animation, photography and stereoscopy were introduced. For much of the rest of the century, many engineers and inventors tried to combine all these new technologies and the much older technique of projection to create a complete illusion or a complete documentation of reality. Colour photography was usually included in these ambitions and the introduction of the phonograph in 1877 seemed to promise the addition of synchronized sound recordings. Between 1887 and 1894, the first successful short cinematographic presentations were established. The biggest popular breakthrough of the technology came in 1895 with the first projected movies that lasted longer than 10 seconds. During the first years after this breakthrough, most motion pictures lasted about 50 seconds, lacked synchronized sound and natural colour, and were mainly exhibited as novelty attractions. In the first decades of the 20th century, movies grew much longer and the medium quickly developed into one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment. The breakthrough of synchronized sound occurred at the end of the 1920s and that of full color motion picture film in the 1930s. By the start of the 21st century, physical film stock was being replaced with digital film technologies at both ends of the production chain by digital image sensors and projectors.
Britain Prepared is a 1915 British documentary feature film. The film is silent and made in black-and-white with some colour sequences in the Kinemacolor additive color process.
The Natural Color Kinematograph Company was a British company formed by Charles Urban in 1909. It sold licences and produced films in Kinemacolor, the first successful colour motion picture process.
The Kinemacolor Company of America was an American company founded in 1910 by Gilbert H. Aymar and James K. Bowen. It distributed and produced films made in Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process.
Ada Aline Urban was a British film company executive. She funded the Kinemacolor business established by her husband Charles Urban, helping it achieve global distribution as the first successful motion picture natural colour system. She became director of the Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which produced Kinemacolor films, as well as other of her husband's film companies. According to the Women Film Pioneers project of Columbia University Libraries, "she was the leading female figure in British film of her day".
