Out of context, there's nothing particularly exciting about a foggy, faded picture of a tartan ribbon, but that very image symbolises a pivotal moment in the history of photography. Without that image, the way we produce photos now would be very different.
The photograph in question was first shown by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell on 17th May 1861 at a Royal Institution lecture at King's College London. King's College marked the anniversary with an evening of talks honouring Clerk Maxwell's scientific discoveries. It was actually his colleague, Thomas Sutton, that took the photo - the final image was produced using 3 black and white pictures taken through red, green and blue filters. These were then projected through separately filtered lenses.
The speed at which photography has evolved in the last 150 years is quite remarkable. We almost take for granted the fact that we can capture, store and transmit images digitally without ever having to think about how they are processed, even though it's not that long since news agencies were transmitting 3 versions of every image so they could be composited at the other end.
As recently as the 1980s, wire photos were sent to clients by agencies such as the Associated Press as 3 black and white images. These were then filtered and merged into a single colour print. Clerk Maxwell's separation method is still used by state-of-the-art digital cameras today to capture light.
As well as this incredible breakthrough, Clerk Maxwell was also responsible for formulating classical electromagnetic theory, and was involved in developing the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which is a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. He was ranked 91st in a poll of the 100 greatest Britons compiled by the BBC, and a number of academic and scientific facilities have been named after him.
The photograph in question was first shown by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell on 17th May 1861 at a Royal Institution lecture at King's College London. King's College marked the anniversary with an evening of talks honouring Clerk Maxwell's scientific discoveries. It was actually his colleague, Thomas Sutton, that took the photo - the final image was produced using 3 black and white pictures taken through red, green and blue filters. These were then projected through separately filtered lenses.
The speed at which photography has evolved in the last 150 years is quite remarkable. We almost take for granted the fact that we can capture, store and transmit images digitally without ever having to think about how they are processed, even though it's not that long since news agencies were transmitting 3 versions of every image so they could be composited at the other end.
As recently as the 1980s, wire photos were sent to clients by agencies such as the Associated Press as 3 black and white images. These were then filtered and merged into a single colour print. Clerk Maxwell's separation method is still used by state-of-the-art digital cameras today to capture light.
As well as this incredible breakthrough, Clerk Maxwell was also responsible for formulating classical electromagnetic theory, and was involved in developing the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which is a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. He was ranked 91st in a poll of the 100 greatest Britons compiled by the BBC, and a number of academic and scientific facilities have been named after him.
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