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undoubtedly contributory, including the long exposures
(a minute or more in sun), lack of direct duplicability
(like daguerreotypes before), and somewhat awkward
viewing arrangements.
Having given up on the Lippmann process, the
Lumieres next tried a wash-off dichromated gelatine
process, which they called the Chroma process (trade-
mark written in Greek). It resulted in rather garishly
colored transparencies, examples of which can be seen
in the Lumiere collection in Lyon). As their efforts in
this area drew to a close in about 1897 they started
work on a screen process based on randomly colored
tiny grains of potato starch. This they industrialized
brilliantly well. They devised a fl otation method to
sort the grains by size, and optimized the grain size
by exposure test. They tested hundreds of dyes both
for coloring the grains and for sensitizing the emul-
sions (their notebooks still exist in Lyon). They ended
up using orange, green and blue-violet dyes for the
grains. They produced a sticky varnish to coat their
glass plates, sprinkled the mixed dyed grains onto it.
They used a self-invented rolling machine to squash
the grains as fl at as possible and then sprinkled on
powdered charcoal to fi ll in the interstices between
the grains to block unfi ltered light from reaching the
emulsion. The fi nal step was to add a sensitized black
and white gelatine layer. The photographer shot the
picture, and exposure times were several seconds in
sunlight, then developed and reversed the negative
to a positive, and mounted a second piece of glass to
protect the emulsion. Viewers were made by others.
The resulting transparencies were often lovely, easily
viewed, and the process straightforward. The random-
ness of the grains gave a more pleasing effect than any
of the line screen processes. Their grain gives them a
visual quality like that of a pointilist painting.
The Lumieres patented the process in 1904 and
marketed it starting in 1907 as the Autochrome process.
It was the fi rst successful, and for almost 30 years, the
dominant color process. It brought color photography
to amateurs as well as well known photographers. Some
really beautiful images by Stieglitz, Steichen de Meyer,
Genthe and others still exist. Millions of plates were
sold world-wide. From about 1908 to perhaps 1912 they
manufactured them in a plant in Vermont, as well as in
Lyon. They were supplied as quarter and half-plates,
and also as stereo plates. The Lumieres gave a number
of public presentations of their images in both Europe
and the U.S. Recently, Prof. Jean-Paul Gandolfo of the
Ecole Louis Lumiere and Bertrand Lavedrine of the
CNRS excavated the Lumiere’s rolling press and had it
hauled to Paris. They are in the process of restoring it
to the making of Autochromes.
In 1909 Albert Kahn, a fi nancier, created a project,
les Archives de la Planete, to document the whole world
in color photos. He under wrote travel and the cost of
buying and processing Autochrome plates for a select
group of well known photographers. The result was a
compilation of more than 100,000 images, now housed,
displayed and published at the Musee Albert Kahn, near
Paris. Shortly after, the National Geographic magazine
started using Autochromes for its color photos. The
Society now holds a collection of nearly 60,000 images
in its Washington D.C. headquarters.
Eventually the Lumieres came up with a fi lm version,
called Filmcolor. They eventually made faster versions,
including Filmcolor Ultrarapide and Lumicolor Ultra-
rapide. By the late 1920s there was competition, chiefl y
Agfacolor, a similar random grain process using droplets
of shellac as the colored grains.
In about 1935, after years of intense effort, two musi-
cians with a fi erce interest in color photography, Leopold
Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, working alongside
the laboratory experts at Eastman Kodak, succeeded in
realizing du Hauron’s dream of a 3-layer-in-one process.
The result was Kodachrome, and with its higher speed
and more saturated color it drove Autochromes out of
the market in about 5 years, though Autochromes were
produced for many more. The Lumiere Company never
recovered, and eventually Ilford bought their operations
and closed them down. The modern era of color began.
Today digital color, based on electronic cameras, is
invading the market.
William R. Alschuler
See Also: Maxwell, James Clerk; Ducos du Hauron,
André Louis; and Eastman, George.Further Reading
Alschuler, William R., On the Physical and Visual State of 100-
year-old Lippmann Color Photographs, Proceedings of the
6th International SPIE Symposium on Display Holography,
Bellingham: SPIE, 1997.
——, The Mystery of Mantechromes, Alternative Photography
International Symposium, Santa Fe: July, 2005 (in press).
Bellone, R. and Fellot, L., Histoire mondiale de la photographie
en couleurs (World History of Color Photography), Paris:
Hachette Realities, 1981.
Boulouch, Nathalie, Les Autochromes Lumiere: La Couleur In-
ventee (The Lumiere Autochromes: The Invention of Color),
St. Paul de Varax: Scheibli Editions, 1995.
Cheval, Francois, Photographies/Histoires Parallels: Collection
du Musee Niecephore Niepce (Photographs/Parallel Histories:
Collection of the Nicephore Niepce Museum, Paris: Somogy
editions d’art, 2000.
Coe, Brian, Color Photography: The First Hundred Years, Lon-
don: Ash and Grant, 1978.
Coote, Jack, Illustrated History of Color Photography, Surbiton:
Fountain Press, 1993.
Drolette, Dan, New Film Developments Cut Out the Fog, in
Photonics Spectra, 64–66, June, 2001.
Eder, Josef M., Geschichte der Photographie (History of Pho-
tography), Halle: Knapp, 1905 (3rd. ed.) and 1932 (4th ed.).
(Illustrated in color.)