On 17 May 1861 the first colour photograph of a tartan ribbon was shown by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell to the Royal Institution in London

The Scots scientist James Clerk Maxwell was born at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, 13 June 1831.

This great physicist presented the first durable colour photograph in 1861, and showed that any colour can be produced with a mixture of any three primary colours, those being red, green, and blue, the basis for colour television.

The National Museum of Scotland website is excellent for more information about Maxwell’s experiments into colour blindness, and to developing colour photographs. Images before this time had been hand coloured.

In 1855 Maxwell’s research into colour vision led him to suggest how to take a photograph that would appear to be fully coloured, using three black and white slides and three coloured filters.

In 1861 he commissioned Thomas Sutton to take a demonstration photograph of a tartan ribbon which he showed projected onto a screen at King’s College London. This image shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, because the photographic chemicals did not respond to red light. Serendipitously, unseen ultraviolet light also reflected off the red portions of the ribbon and provided the third colour.

Maxwell died at the age of 48, and is buried at Parton Kirk, Dumfries and Galloway, close to where he grew up.