Editing Frederic Eugene Ives (section)

==Color photography==
[[File:F E Ives inserting Kromogram cropped.jpg|thumb|220px|right|Ives inserting a Kromogram into a Junior Kromskop, circa 1899]]
Ives was a pioneer in the field of [[color photography]]. He first demonstrated a system of natural color photography at the 1885 Novelties Exposition of the [[Franklin Institute]] in Philadelphia.<ref name=sipley>Louis Walton Sipley, ''A Half Century of Color'', New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951.</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Ives, Fred E.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2f8_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA367|title=Isochromatic Photography|pages=367–371|date=May 1885|volume=119|journal=Journal of the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania|year = 1885| issue=5 | doi=10.1016/0016-0032(85)90283-2 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> His fully developed Kromskop (long-vowel marks over both "o"s and pronounced "chrome-scope") color photography system was commercially available in England by late 1897 and in the US about a year later.

Three separate black-and-white photographs of the subject were taken through carefully adjusted red, green and blue [[Filter (optics)|filters]], a method of photographically recording color first suggested by [[James Clerk Maxwell]] in 1855 and imperfectly demonstrated in 1861, but subsequently forgotten and independently reinvented by others.

Transparent positives of the three images were viewed in Ives' Kromskop (a device known generically as a chromoscope or photochromoscope), which used red, green and blue filters and transparent reflectors to visually combine them into one full-color image. Both [[monocular]] and [[stereoscopy|stereoscopic]] Kromskop viewers were made. Prepared sets of images, called Kromograms, were sold for viewing in them. Alternatively, a Kromskop "triple [[magic lantern|lantern]]" projector could be used to illuminate each image with light of the correct color and exactly superimpose them on a projection screen.

Special cameras and camera attachments were sold to prospective "Kromskopists" who wanted to create their own Kromograms.

The quality of the color was highly praised but the system was not a commercial success. It was discontinued shortly after the 1907 introduction of the [[Autochrome]] process, which was simple to use and required no special equipment.

In 2009, several Kromogram views of San Francisco made by Ives six months after the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake and fire]] were discovered while cataloging a collection of Kromograms at the [[National Museum of American History]].<ref>[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/first-colour-pics-of-san-francisco-after-1906-quake-found-by-smithsonian-volunteer/story-fn3dxity-1226019243448 The Australian 10 March 2011]</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/1906-san-francisco-earthquake-color-photographs_n_834840.html |title=1906 San Francisco Earthquake: First Color Photographs Found |work=[[Huffington Post]] |agency=[[Associated Press]] |date=March 11, 2011 |accessdate=2015-07-27}}</ref> They are believed to be the only existing images showing the aftermath of that disaster in natural color (i.e., with color recorded and reproduced photographically rather than added in by hand), as well as the earliest extant natural color photographs of San Francisco.