Friday, February 10, 2017

Things I did not know

James Clerk Maxwell is one of the trinity of greatest physicists along with Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein).  I hadn't known that he took the first color photograph in 1861:


He was interested in color, and spent 6 years investigating perception of color, color blindness, and color theory.  His research led to the idea of taking three identical photographs, where each photo was taken through a colored filter.  One was red, one was green, and one was blue.  Maxwell had slides of each made and projected this image at a lecture in 1861.

Maxwell may have been the last great theorist who was also a great tinkerer.

2 comments:

  1. Old NFOFebruary 10, 2017 at 12:20 PM

    Huh, didn't know that either. I vaguely remember he took the first color photo, but didn't know the rest.

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  2. SiGraybeardFebruary 10, 2017 at 7:13 PM

    Like Old NFO, I didn't know that but I didn't even vaguely recall hearing that. I'm somewhat of a fan of Maxwell, too. Enough to buy a copy of his biography, but not enough to have read the whole thing, though. (Yeah, I know... intellectually too lazy)

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