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Key words: Motion Picture Color Processes, Loyd Jones, Sonochrome, Pathécolor, Eastman Kodak Co., Quo Vadis? (1912)
'Natural colour' was the term coined in the late 1900s for genuine colour photography, as distinct from coloured or 'painted' monochrome images. Exactly when and where the first use of the term natural colour occurred is not clear (it was probably applied by ClerkMaxwell during his demonstrations in Edinburgh in the 1860s), but it was widely used by 1900, hence my connotative use of 'unnatural'.
'Natural', to distinguish a genuine colour process from a 'coloured' image, crops up again and again in early technical literature and manuals for photographic technicians. Good examples are the Kinemacolor programmes, especially where Urban and Smith state that they 'take special pride in the fact...that their invention is based on solid foundation of established scientific truths' (Madison Square Garden, Kinemacolor Programme, 11December 1909). A second example, years later, is the 'Fox Nature Color Pictures Instructions for Cameramen' in 1929. It is slightly unfortunate that both these systems were two-colour (not three-colour) processes. In both cases the claimants were perhaps trying to defend their results to their fellow technologists, despite the fact that the processes were only approximations to the ideal.
'Coloured' was the term almost universally used to describe the colour images of silent film. In my father's collection of old newspaper cuttings was a page to remind him of his favourite film star, Asta Nielsen. It describes The Bonds of Marriage (to be shown at the Kursaal in Southend where his family was staying in November 1913) as 'A beautiful coloured social drama in 3 parts. Better than ever.' (The advertisement spelled her name Neilsen, incorrectly!) Tinting and toning, two very different chemical techniques, were the principles used for all these 'unnatural' colouring methods. They were frequently confused in the minds - and just as often in the eyes - of even experienced viewers. From about 1929 onwards, because the technology they used did not suit the new combined sound-on-film, and despite many courageous and expensive experiments, the majority of the world's cinema audiences saw only black-and-white images on screen. It would be many years before widely distributed Technicolor and its various competitors filtered across the world [Fig. 1].
Over the last...