Tangible Media: Removable Storage of Image, Sound, Motion and Data
Tangible Media: Removable Storage of Image, Sound, Motion and Data
Tangible Media: Removable Storage of Image, Sound, Motion and Data
Channels
Stereo Kromskop

Title:

Castle at Thun, Switzerland

Date:

1895–1907

Material:

Glass, cardboard, fabric ribbons

Company:

The Photochromoscope Syndicate Ltd.

Location:

London, England

A kromogram designed to be viewed in a stereo Kromskop. It consists of three glass stereo pairs, each pair taken in sequence through a different color filter using a camera with a sliding back. The Kromskop then combined the three sets of views using filters and semi-transparent mirrors.

Ives introduced the Kromskop in 1895, after working on it for almost 20 years, but although the Kromskop produced very realistic color images, it was not successful. It was expensive—a viewer with eight Kromograms cost $50 in 1901 ($1850 in today's dollars). It required a very strong light source. Achieving a quality image required aligning the three slides precisely (Wing 1988, 2–6). Most importantly, Kromograms did not fit user's expectations of photography. Ives tried to position Kromograms as another form of removable media analogous to phonograph records and movies:

The phonograph cylinder must be placed in the phonograph before it can be made to reproduce the sounds recorded; the kinetoscope ribbon must pass through the kinetoscope in order to visually reproduce the moving scene; and the Kromogram must be placed in the Krömsköp in order to visually reproduce the object photographed (Ives 1901, 5).

But that was not what people had come to expect from photography. A review in the American Journal of Photography pointed out that “most people have looked for a process of color photography which would decorate our walls and illustrate our books and periodicals” (Bartlett 1901).

Note that this particular Kromogram has apparently been repaired with the blank card in the wrong place—it should be second from the top. As it stands, it won't fit properly in the Kromskop.
Images swapped for cross-eyed viewing
Original title: "The Kromskop, an Instrument for Viewing Photographs in the Colors of Nature" (Scientific American 1900)
From Ives' US Patent 531,040. The image photographed through the red filter is placed at A, through the blue filter at B and through the green filter at C. The image at A rests on a red filter and at B on a blue filter. The green image is filtered through transparent mirrors D and E, which are tinted blue and red, respectively. Light from A and B are reflected off the mirrors without further filtering. The combined images are viewed through the lens F.
References
⌃  Back to citationBartlett, John. 1901. Kromskop Color Photography. American Journal of Photography.
⌃  Back to citationIves, Frederick Eugene. 1901. Krömsköp Color Photography. Philadelphia: Ives Krömsköp Co.
⌃  Back to citationMcKernana, Luke. 2008. Colourful stories no. 2 – The Kromskop. The Bioscope. Jan 12, 2008.
⌃  Back to citationScientific American. 1900. The Ives System of Color Photography. 82, no. 18 (May 5, 1900): 277.
⌃  Back to citationWing, Paul. 1988. “The Ives Kromskop.” Stereo World, March/April 1988.