Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
BRADFORD, England — A British museum has uncovered the earliest-known color film footage, a discovery that rewrites film history, according to the museum.
The film was shot between 1901 and 1902, pre-dating Kinemacolor, what was thought to be the first successful color film process, by eight years. It was made by Edward Turner, a British photographer and inventor who worked for American color photography pioneer Frederic Eugene Ives.
The National Media Museum in Bradford, England, said it found the film three years ago in the collection of Charles Urban, an American businessman who provided backing to Turner. Michael Harvey, the museum's curator of cinematography, led a team tasked with seeing if the films could be reconstructed into color footage using the method Turner patented in 1899.
"Film historians had known about this process but always regarded it as a failure," Michael Harvey, the museum's curator of cinematography, told The Telegraph. "We proved that his process worked. But the number of people who saw Turner's films can be counted on one hand and we had to wait for digital means to produce his images the way he envisaged them."
The footage includes a goldfish, a shot of a beach, soldiers marching and what is thought to be the first ever shot of traffic on London's Knightsbridge. Turner's three children are involved in a variety of scenes. The team was able to date the footage based on the ages of Turner's children.
The discovery restores Turner to his rightful place as the father of color film, according to Paul Goodman, the museum's head of collections..
"We believe this will literally rewrite film history," Goldman told the Guardian. "I don't think it is an overstatement. These are the world's first colour moving images."
