Forgotten Colours of the Past

This group of Dufaycolor transparencies was purchased on eBay for research in the Color-Screen project and is now held by the Šechtl & Voseček Museum of Photography. According to the seller, it came from the circle of J. B. S. Thubron and/or his wife Diana, and this photograph was taken in Egypt. The car can be identified as a 1937 Vauxhall Light Six 14 hp, model DX. Its London registration, DXW 40, helps to date the photograph more precisely: the DXW series began to be issued in April 1937, and number 40 belongs to the beginning of the sequence. If the Egyptian attribution is correct, the photograph cannot pre-date the spring of 1937.

The Dufaycolor réseau was exceptionally fine: contemporary technical descriptions give about 1.5 million colour elements per square inch. Across a 6 × 9 cm transparency this amounts to roughly 12.6 million individual colour samples. By the number of colour elements, a 6 × 9 cm Dufaycolor is therefore roughly a 12-megapixel photograph. The screen works on a principle similar to the Bayer filter in a modern digital camera: each element records only one primary colour, not a full-colour pixel.

The third transparency from the same group can be identified precisely from its architecture: it shows the entrance to the United Kingdom Pavilion, with its two golden lions, at the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. Together with the London registration on the Egyptian photograph, this dates the group quite closely to 1937–1938. The seller attributed it to J. B. S. Thubron and/or his wife Diana and stated that they received a prize for colour photography at the Glasgow exhibition. The exact award has not yet been independently verified.