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.
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first showed the photograph at a Royal Institution lecture at King's College London on 17th May 1861. The photo was actually taken by his colleague Thomas Sutton, and the eventual image was actually produced using 3 black and white pictures taken through red, green and blue filters which were then projected through correspondingly filtered lenses. King's College marked this anniversary with an evening of talks commemorating Clerk Maxwell's scientific discoveries.
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.
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first showed the photograph at a Royal Institution lecture at King's College London on 17th May 1861. The photo was actually taken by his colleague Thomas Sutton, and the eventual image was actually produced using 3 black and white pictures taken through red, green and blue filters which were then projected through correspondingly filtered lenses. King's College marked this anniversary with an evening of talks commemorating Clerk Maxwell's scientific discoveries.
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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