Edward Raymond Turner (nonfiction)

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Edward Raymond Turner (circa 1896)

Edward Raymond Turner (1873 – 9 March 1903) was a pioneering British inventor, photographer, and cinematographer.

He produced the earliest known color motion picture film footage.

Biography

Turner was born in 1873 in Clevedon, North Somerset, UK. 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.

Turner died suddenly on 9 March 1903 of a heart attack. Following his death, film producer Charles Urban, who had been financing Turner, asked George Albert Smith to continue his work.

Color projector

Lee and Turner Color Projector, 1902. Object from the National Media Museum Collection.

Turner is noted for his attempts to develop what is believed to be the first actually implemented color motion picture system, initially with financial backing from Frederick Marshall Lee, then later from Charles Urban.

Turner’s method for creating moving color pictures was to record successive frames on black and white film through red, green and blue filters and to project these sets of three frames superimposed through similar filters.

Images are projected through red, green and blue filters onto a screen at the rate of 16 pictures per second.

Nonfiction cross-reference

Fiction cross-reference

External links