Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Maxwell’s disappointment and Sutton’s accident

Klein, Susanne; Elter, Paul; Trujillo Vazquez, Abigail

Maxwell’s disappointment and Sutton’s accident Thumbnail


Authors

Profile Image

Dr Susanne Klein Susanne.Klein@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor in EPSRC Manufacturing Fellow

Paul Elter

Profile Image

Abigail Trujillo Vazquez Abigail.TrujilloVazquez@uwe.ac.uk
Marie Curie - ESR6 The Development of vector-based printing for 2.5d printing



Abstract

It has almost become somewhat of an urban legend or internet myth that James Clerk Maxwell created the first colour image and had demonstrated this at the Royal Institution in London in May 1861. He did present something, but what? In ‘The scientific papers of James Clerk Maxwell’ the experiment and resulting colour projection was regarded as a failure and barely mentioned. Thomas Sutton, a well-established and respected photographer, was tasked with carrying out Maxwell’s thought-experiment using the latest photographic processes. Sutton, himself author of various books on photography, does not mention the experiment in any of his publications. Move forward to the 1930’s and enter the photo-chemist Douglas Arthur Spencer, who gained access to the original lanternslides and made copies of the three colour separations. He made the first and only physical print of the 1861 tartan ribbon and it is this colour print that we now see everywhere as Maxwell’s first colour photograph. In 1961, the 100th anniversary, Ralph M Evans published a paper in Scientific American trying to solve the riddle of the famous tartan ribbon. The original glass plate photographs were made using the wet-collodion process which has a very narrow spectral sensitivity centered in the blue light wavelength. Sutton could not have recorded in the green and red part of the spectrum. Evans deduced from an experiment with modern materials that Sutton had possibly recorded the ultraviolet reflection present in the red of the tartan ribbon and ‘accidently’ presenting itself as the red slide and the resulting image can be considered a ‘false colour’ image. Now, 160 yr since that first experiment, we are exploring and executing some of the material and technical truths about wet-plate collodion and what might have actually been recorded and why is it that both Maxwell and Sutton regarded the experiment such a failure, but the rest of the world did not.

Citation

Klein, S., Elter, P., & Trujillo Vazquez, A. (2022). Maxwell’s disappointment and Sutton’s accident. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 55(49), Article 491002. https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 5, 2022
Online Publication Date Dec 8, 2022
Publication Date Dec 8, 2022
Deposit Date Dec 13, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Print ISSN 1751-8113
Electronic ISSN 1751-8121
Publisher IOP Publishing
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 55
Issue 49
Article Number 491002
DOI https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db
Keywords Maxwell's colour theory; colour photography; Wet-Collodion; optical spectra
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10252925
Publisher URL https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db

Files

Maxwell's disappointment and Sutton's accident (1.3 Mb)
Document

Licence
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved

Publisher Licence URL
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved

Copyright Statement
This is the author’s accepted manuscript of the article 'Klein, S., Elter, P., & Trujillo Vazquez, A. (2022). Maxwell's disappointment and Sutton's accident. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 55(49), Article 491002'. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db

The final published version is available here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db


Maxwell's disappointment and Sutton's accident (937 Kb)
PDF

Licence
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved

Publisher Licence URL
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved

Copyright Statement
This is the author’s accepted manuscript of the article 'Klein, S., Elter, P., & Trujillo Vazquez, A. (2022). Maxwell's disappointment and Sutton's accident. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 55(49), Article 491002'. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db

The final published version is available here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8121/aca8db






You might also like



Downloadable Citations