Lee and Turner
Description
“Frederick Marshall Lee, of Walton, and Edward Raymond Turner, of Hounslow, to whom is usually accorded the credit of achieving the first practical results in additive projection. Their experimental work was financed by Charles Urban, a well-known impresario and showman of the day. Records were made in a camera with a single lens equipped with rotating filters of red, green and blue. Projection was attempted with three lenses vertically disposed. Apparently each picture was projected through each of the lenses in turn, and three pictures always projected simultaneously (E.P. 6,202, 1899).”
(Klein, Adrian Bernhard = Cornwell-Clyne (1940): Colour Cinematography. Boston: American Photographic Pub. Co.. 2nd revised edition, p. 6)
Later the process was developed as a two-color additive process and became wide-spread under the trade mark Kinemacolor.
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„Their projector […] used three lenses and a special filter
wheel which enabled every frame of the film to be projected three times in succession through the appropriate filter as it passed through the triple frame projector aperture. Although it eventually led to the Kinemacolor two colour process, the Lee and Turner patent was not successful“. Source: Coote, Jack H. (1993): The Illustrated History of Colour Photography. Surbiton, Surrey: Fountain Press. -
“The First Color Moving Pictures”, from the YouTube channel of the National Media Museum.
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Lee Turner projector in the Media History Museum in Bradford.
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„In 1899 Lee and Turner obtained a patent for a three colour
process of cinematography requiring a single lens camera
[…] making a recurring sequence of red green and
blue exposures through a rotating filter cum shutter“. Source: Coote, Jack H. (1993): The Illustrated History of Colour Photography. Surbiton, Surrey: Fountain Press. -
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„In 1899 Lee and Turner obtained a patent for a three colour
process of cinematography requiring a single lens camera
[…] making a recurring sequence of red green and
blue exposures through a rotating filter cum shutter“. Source: Coote, Jack H. (1993): The Illustrated History of Colour Photography. Surbiton, Surrey: Fountain Press. -
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„Their projector […] used three lenses and a special filter
wheel which enabled every frame of the film to be projected
three times in succession through the appropriate filter as it
passed through the triple frame projector aperture. Although
it eventually led to the Kinemacolor two colour process, the
Lee and Turner patent was not successful“. Source: Coote, Jack H. (1993): The Illustrated History of Colour Photography. Surbiton, Surrey: Fountain Press. -
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National Media Museum, UK. Lee and Turner Colour Projector, 1902.
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Source: Klein, Adrian Bernhard (Cornwell-Clyne) (1940): Colour Cinematography. Boston: American Photographic Pub. Co.
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Illustration of the process from National Media Museum’s short documentary.
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38 mm positive of the Lee Turner film showing the three b/w images for the three color records. Credit: Brian Pritchard.
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Original Technical Papers and Primary Sources
E.P. 6,202, 1899. [Download on this page.]
Secondary Sources
Brown, Simon (2012): Technical Appendix. In: Sarah Street: Colour Films in Britain. The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 259-287, on p. 276. View Quote
Cleveland, David; Pritchard, Brian (2015): How Films were Made and Shown. Some Aspects of the Technical Side of Motion Picture Film 1895-2015. Manningtree, Essex: David Cleveland, on pp. 197–201. View Quote
Hopwood, Henry Vaux (1915): Color cinematography. In: Henry Vaux Hopwood: Hopwood’s living pictures. Their history, photoproduction, and practical working. With classified lists of British patents and bibliography. London: The Hatton Press, new ed., rev. and enl. by R.B. Foster, pp. 253–273, on pp. 262–264. View Quote
Klein, Adrian Bernhard = Cornwell-Clyne (1940): Colour Cinematography. Boston: American Photographic Pub. Co. 2nd revised edition, p. 6. View Quote
Films
According to Simon Brown, Technical Appendix: Lee and Turner colour process. In: Street, Sarah (2012): Colour Films in Britain. The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan:
Parrot on Perch (1901)
Fish in Bowl (1901)
Downloads
Original Patent E.P. 6,202, 1899.
Download PDF
Patents
Restoration
Cleveland, David; Pritchard, Brian (2015): How Films were Made and Shown. Some Aspects of the Technical Side of Motion Picture Film 1895-2015. Manningtree, Essex: David Cleveland, on p. 200. View Quote
