Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell is credited with creating the first color photograph in 1861. At Maxwell’s request, British photographer Thomas Sutton took three black-and-white photographs of a Scottish tartan ribbon tied in a rosette, each time with a different colored lens filter: red, green, and blue. They then printed the photographs on glass and projected them simultaneously on a wall during a lecture. This projection is regarded as the first color photograph, and Maxwell’s process provided the foundation for modern color photography.
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