Pictures from the Past

but not by much. Still, an interesting look back in time. Reminds me of a lot of black & white (sepia) photos I inherited from my parents taken around that time.

Some were right during the start for my time Jun 1942

Makes me realize time is passing. I was born prior to those pictures and my sister was born at the end of that time period. Brings back memories.

but I grew up in the big city - NYC - so I only saw those kind of photos long after they were taken. It was a simpler time, for sure.

Thanks.
Fred

Shortly before my time too, and I don't remember there being any color pictures like that back then. Only black and whites.

is that a lot photographers today wouldn't be able to make a print from a slide. In 50 years or so, there won't be the materials available to make prints from either slides or negatives. All of this rich photographic heritage we have will be orphaned.

What I expected to be a quick glance turned into an hour of careful study. Fantastic site.

I like to see pics of old trucks at work.

With me being born a few years after the newest picture I really appreciate seeing them. It does bring back childhood memories of simpler times.

Acutally even relatively inexpensive scanners do a pretty good job of making digital copies of old slides. Prints then can be made from the digital version.

I have scanned quite a few of the slide pictures that I took back in the 50's.

I always think of bygone days as being lived in B&W, ridiculous I know, but seeing those days in color is incongruous to me.

Before my time but so interesting. Life certainly was different then.

Thanks for that link. There are a lot more pages of great photos that can be reached by links at the bottom of that (and subsequent) pages.

I didn't know they had color photographs back then...

From Answers.com

The first color plate, Autochrome, invented by the French Lumière brothers, reached the market in 1907. It was based on a 'screen-plate' filter made of dyed dots of potato starch, and was the only color film on the market until German Agfa introduced the similar Agfacolor in 1932. In 1935, American Kodak introduced the first modern ('integrated tri-pack') color film, Kodachrome, based on three colored emulsions. This was followed in 1936 by Agfa's Agfacolor Neue. Unlike the Kodachrome tri-pack process, the color couplers in Agfacolor Neue were integral with the emulsion layers, which greatly simplified the film processing. Most modern color films, except Kodachrome, are based on the Agfacolor Neue technology. Instant color film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.

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In 1861 James C. Maxwell, Cambridge professor of physics who is best known for his work in electromagnetism, took the world's first color photograph of a tartan ribbon. Maxwell solved the problem of photographically recording color using basically the same method we use today in a modern digital camera. Maxwell's photograph was an RGB composite. He took three black & white photos of the ribbon; one through a red filter, one through a green filter and one through a blue filter. He then projected the three black & white images onto a wall registering them together. When the filters for each image were placed over the projection lenses a full color image appeared. Maxwell's work laid the foundation for all subsequent color photographic processes.

In 1869 Louis Ducos du Hauron, building upon Maxwell's discovery, published the details of a tri-color carbon pigment process for making color photographic prints. Although patented, du Hauron's work did not generate a commercial process.

Working at the turn of the century and beyond, the Russian photographer/inventor Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii created and used a tricolor camera that rapidily exposed three B&W neagtives as RGB composites to produce excellent full color photographs. See this link: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/