Technology We Take For Granted Today,

had to be invented at some point in the past,

take color films, we all enjoy them both in the cinemas and at home on our television, but what were their origins? now this I find really interesting, back in 1901/2 two pioneers of color films made one that has just been re-found in The National Media Museum in the city in the city of Bradford, the museum is displaying the vivid images from its collection for the first time in over a hundred years, these films were made by photographer and inventor Edward Turner using a process he patented with his financial backer Frederick Lee in 1899,


Lee and Turner’s invention has always been regarded by film historians as a practical failure but it has now been ‘unlocked’ through digital technology, revealing the images produced by the process for the first time in over a hundred years, it’s also a story of young death, (Turner died of a heart attack aged just 30), and commercial intrigue in the earliest days of the film industry, on discovering the film, Michael Harvey, Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum worked with film archive experts Brian Pritchard and David Cleveland to reconstruct the moving footage in color following the precise method laid out in Lee and Turner’s 1899 patent, they turned to experts at the BFI National Archive who were able to undertake the delicate work of transforming the film material into digital files, and so the team were able to watch these vivid color moving pictures for the first time, over one hundred years since they had been made,

Michael Harvey, Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum commented, 'We sat in the editing suite entranced as full-color shots made 110 years ago came to life on the screen, the image of the goldfish was stunning: its colors were so lifelike and subtle, then there was a macaw with brilliantly colored plumage, a brief glimpse of soldiers marching and, most interestingly, young children dressed in Edwardian finery, I realized we had a significant find on our hands, We had proved that the Lee and Turner process worked but it remained to identify who those children were and establish as precisely as possible when these first color images were made', you can see the Lee and Turner footage for the first time as part of a free display, at the National Media Museum in Bradford, entrance to the museum is also free, but just think, could the kids in the picture above be one of your great grand parents? the hunt is on!