Edward Raymond Turner

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Turner was born in 1873 in Clevedon, North Somerset, UK.{{cite web|title=Turner, Edward Raymond|url=http://www.photolondon.org.uk/pages/details.asp?pid=7870|archive-url=https://archive.today/20121224144830/http://www.photolondon.org.uk/pages/details.asp?pid=7870|url-status=dead|archive-date=24 December 2012|publisher=PhotoLondon|access-date=14 September 2012}} In later life, Raymond and his wife Edith lived near the centre of Hounslow in West London. Some of Turner's colour film experiments were carried out in the back garden of this house in Montague Road and showed his three young children, Alfred, Agnes and Wilfrid.{{cite web|title=The Race for Colour|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkqW6Vu3GUU|publisher=BBC|access-date=1 June 2015}}

Turner was only 29 when he died suddenly at his workshop on 9 March 1903 of a heart attack.{{cite web|title=Edward Raymond Turner|url=http://www.victorian-cinema.net/erturner.htm|publisher=Who's Who of Victorian Cinema|quote=Turner died of a heart attack at his workshop on 9 March 1903 |access-date=13 September 2012}} He was buried 3 days later in the churchyard of St Leonard's parish church, Heston, Hounslow.St Leonard's parish church burial register | published: 1903. | Retrieved 6 December 2019 Following his death, film producer, Charles Urban, who had been financing Turner, asked George Albert Smith to continue his work.

File:Still from footage recorded by Edward Turner, 1902. (7996010096).jpg

Turner is noted for his attempts to develop what is believed to be the first actually implemented colour motion picture system, initially with financial backing from Frederick Marshall Lee, then later from Charles Urban.{{cite web |url=https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/edward-raymond-turner-discovery-re-writes-history-of-early-film/ |title=We have discovered the world's first colour moving pictures |last=Hughes |first=Beth |date=12 September 2012 |website=National Science and Media Museum blog |publisher=National Science and Media Museum |access-date=1 May 2020 |quote=}}Carlaw D (2020) Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914 (revised edition), pp.325–326. ([https://archive.acscricket.com/books/Kent_Cricketers_A_to_Z_Part_One_Revised_Expanded.pdf Available online] at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 21 December 2020.)

On 22 March 1899, while Turner was employed in the London workshop of colour photography pioneer Frederic E. Ives, Turner and Lee applied for a British patent on a 3-colour additive motion picture process. It was granted on 3 March 1900.British Patent (B.P.) no. 6,202 (1899), 22 March 1899, '[http://www.brianpritchard.com/GB189906202A.pdf Means for taking and exhibiting cinematographic pictures]'. In September 1902,{{Cite web|url=https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/the-first-colour-moving-pictures-timeline/|title=The first colour moving pictures: A timeline|last=Museum|first=National Science and Media|date=29 September 2012|website=National Science and Media Museum blog|language=en-GB|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190513102103/https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/the-first-colour-moving-pictures-timeline/|archive-date=13 May 2019|access-date=18 November 2019}} Urban bought out Lee's interest and continued funding research and development.

Turner's camera used a rotating disk of three colour filters to photograph colour separations on one roll of black-and-white film. A red, green or blue-filtered image was recorded on each successive frame of film. The finished film print was projected, three frames at a time, through the corresponding colour filters.

The system suffered from two types of colour registration problems.

• First, because the three frames had not been photographed at the same time, rapidly moving objects in the scene did not match up on the screen and appeared as a blurred jumble of false colours.
• Second, and apparently much worse, mechanical instabilities in the system caused serious overall registration problems, so that the three superimposed images ceaselessly jittered and wove about relative to each other.[http://www.brianpritchard.com/Lee_Turner_Project.htm Pritchard, B. (2012). "Lee-Turner Project with the National Media Museum".] [https://web.archive.org/web/20181014233451/http://www.brianpritchard.com/Lee_Turner_Project.htm Archived] at the Wayback Machine, Retrieved 20 April 2013.{{cite book | author=Robert Allen Nowotny | title=The Way of All Flesh Tones | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NrYaytLfSJYC&pg=PR3 | access-date=13 September 2012 | year=1979 | publisher=University of Texas at Austin | isbn=978-0-8240-5109-9 }}{{Dead link|date=February 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{rp|42}}

File:Lee and Turner Colour Projector, 1902. (7996004472).jpg

When Turner died in 1903, Urban passed on the development of the process to George Albert Smith in the hope of creating a commercially viable process. Smith however found the process unworkable, and instead developed Kinemacolor, a greatly simplified two-colour version that enjoyed great commercial success until 1915.{{Cite book |last=McKernan |first=Luke |title=Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-Fiction Film in Britain and America, 1897-1925 |publisher=University of Exeter Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-0859892964}}{{rp|118}}

Turner's role in the development of colour film technology was not widely appreciated until the UK's National Media Museum produced digital colour composites of his then 110-year-old test films and unveiled them publicly on 12 September 2012.

The modern digital restoration allows present-day viewers to see a more successful combination of the three colour elements than was possible with the original mechanical projection system.{{cite news|url=http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/first-ever-color-movie-found-britain-national-media-museum-bradford-article-1.1158971|title=First-ever color movie found at Britain's National Media Museum in Bradford|last=Roberts|first=Christine|date=13 September 2012|work=NY Daily News|location=New York}}[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19598445 Martin Scorsese on world's first colour film discovery] BBC 22 September 2012{{YouTube|KkqW6Vu3GUU|BBC1 Documentary 'Race for Colour'}}

• List of colour film systems
• List of early colour feature films
• List of film formats

{{Reflist}}

• {{IMDb name|8643876}}
• Lee and Turner on [http://zauberklang.ch/filmcolors/timeline-entry/1324/ Timeline of Historical Film Colors], with primary and secondary sources, patents, and photographs of historical film prints.
• [http://www.victorian-cinema.net/erturner Edward Raymond Turner entry at Who's Who in Victorian Cinema]

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Category:1903 deaths

Category:English inventors

Category:British cinema pioneers

Category:1873 births