Abstract
BY the death of M. Louis Ducos DU HAURON we lose one of the foremost pioneers in the photography of colour. M. du Hauron was born on December 8, 1837, and died on August 31 last. La Nature of September 25 publishes a portrait taken in 1877, and the British Journal of Photography, Colour Supplement, of October 1 gives the portrait by which he is generally known, taken evidently some years after the other, and a useful chronology of his work. It seems that he began the study of luminous sensations in 1859, and that by 1862 he had worked out a method of colour photography by means of three colour filters and complementary printing; but his chief contributions to the subject are contained in two small volumes, which, unfortunately, are now very rare—“Les Couleurs en Photographic: Solution du Problème,” published in 1869, and “Les Couleurs en Photographic et en particulier 1'Hèliochromie au Charbon,” published in the following year. In these publications he enunciated the principles of three-colour photography, including even the present “screen-plate” processes, such as the autochrome, Paget, and others. It was impossible then to carry out these processes satisfactorily, because it was not until 1873 that Vogel discovered the possibility of sensitising plates for colour, and it was still later that gelatine plates were commercially manufactured. M. du Hauron was a pioneer also in motion photography, stereoscopic work, and other matters.
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[Obituaries]. Nature 106, 218–219 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106218b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106218b0