Lumière's Autochromes

The brothers Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis (1864-1948) Lumière launched in 1907 the first commercially produced glass plate for color photography, the autochrome.

Interested amateur photographers became curious about the new technology and is often chosen motifs like flowers, still life, parks, streets and buildings.

Autochrome is constructed with a thin adhesive coating is prepared with an irregular color screen, which consists of equal parts of red, green and violet blue stained round potato starch granules.

They are just a few thousandths of a millimeter-sized and spaced so they do not overlap. The spaces between the grains are filled with powdered charcoal.

On top of the grid of color grain cast a color-sensitive emulsion, in which color images are formed.

In 1923, Agfa-developed auto chrome-limits to resolution, speed and color reproduction were improved. Instead of toner used drops of schellac, image as an emulsion of rubber. When the schellac dryed it pulled together so much that the stained starch grains ended up right next to each other.

An autochrome is built with layers bonded to each other. Silver gelatin emulsion, varnish, breaks, varnish and a glasplate. The silver gelatinemulsion shaped the image itself, which is black and white.

A coat of varnish attaches silvergelatinemulsionen on the grid and prevents moisture and chemicals from entering the water soluble screen colors.

Raster layer consists of small round potato starch grains dyed in red, green and mauve.

Each starch grains forming a small light filters in their color.

Raster layer is attached with varnish at the glasplate thus is the base for all layers.

To protect the sensitive layers of damage is a protective glass plate over and everything is held together around the edges with a strip of paper. If you look at the autochrome plate from the protecting glassplate, you can see the picture from the right direction.

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