The Oldest Color Moving Pictures Ever Found

Can you believe you're going to see color film footage from over a century ago? Inventor Edward Raymond Turner, along with businessman Frederick Marshall Lee, filed a patent for a color film process in 1899, but it was considered a failure. From the YouTube page:

Turner developed his complex three-colour process with support, first from Lee and then from the American film entrepreneur, Charles Urban. Using a camera and projector made by Brighton-based engineer Alfred Darling, Turner developed the process sufficiently to take various test films of colourful subjects such as a macaw, a goldfish in a bowl against a brightly striped background and his children playing with sunflowers, before his death in 1903 aged just 29. Urban went on to develop the process further with the pioneer film-maker George Albert Smith which resulted in the commercially successful Kinemacolor system, patented in 1906 and first exhibited to the public in 1909. Sadly, Turner's widow never received a penny from her husband's invention.

When the film footage was found in his archives, it appeared to be black and white. But each frame had been shot through alternating red, blue, and green filters. Watch how Michael Harvey, Brian Pritchard, and David Cleveland of the National Media Museum reverse-engineered the process to see the colors. Read more about it at Engadget. (via the Presurfer)