Autochrome : No small potatoes
The most improbable object imaginable - the lowly, lumpy potato - played a leading role in the great leap forward of color photography.
The story begins in 1903, when two imaginative French inventors, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, seized the pomme de terre and made it the basis for a dazzling new imaging process they called the autochrome, an innovation that would transform a monochromatic world into one suddenly gleaming with color.
Autochrome was the king of the photographic world for the next 30 years, until it was overtaken by Kodachrome and Agfacolor film and the easy-to-use 35-millimeter camera, which allowed photographers to blend in, move fast and render a rapidly changing world in bright colors.
Nothing would look quite so mellow after that.
( Tip of the hat to The Smithsonian )
