Frederic Eugene Ives

Ives worked between 1856 and 1937 across physicist, photographer and inventor. This article rests on 9 published texts and 41 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

• Name — Frederic Eugene Ives • Born — 17 February 1856 • Birthplace — Litchfield, Connecticut, United States • Died — 27 May 1937 • Spouse — Mary Olmstead • Children — Herbert E. Ives

Ives was also an important contributor to the development of the science of colorimetry. His paper of 1915 proposed a color model in the form of a cube, with three of the vertices forming a triangle for the additive primaries, three others a triangle for their secondary colors, and the two remaining (opposite) vertices for black and white. A similar model was adopted by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) as the basis of their color space drawn up in 1926, revised in 1931, which has been influential on all scientific color studies since then. Ives died in 1937.

Frederic Eugene Ives is recorded with the occupation photographer. Established in Bibliothèque nationale de France under 16987056h. Established in Library of Congress under n97002361. Established in RKDartists under 381901. Established in FAST under 385810. Recorded as having received Elliott Cresson Medal, Rumford Prize and National Inventors Hall of Fame. Recognition and collections. Ives received Elliott Cresson Medal, Rumford Prize and National Inventors Hall of Fame. Paul Getty Museum.

• Illustration — Ives inserting a Kromogram into a Junior Kromskop, circa 1899 Ives was a pioneer in the field of color photography. He first demonstrated a system of natural color photography at the 1885 Novelties Exposition of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. His fully developed Kromskop (long-vowel marks over both "o"s and pronounced "chrome-scope") color photography system was commercially available in England by late 1897 and in the US about a year later. Three separate black-and-white photographs of the subject were taken through carefully adjusted red, green and blue filters, a method of photographically recording color first suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and imperfectly demonstrated in 1861, but subsequently forgotten and independently reinvented by others. • Illustration — An Ives Kromogram issued in 1897 Transparent positives of the three images were viewed in Ives' Kromskop (a device known generically as a chromoscope or photochromoscope), which used red, green and blue filters and transparent reflectors to visually combine them into one full-color image. Both monocular and stereoscopic Kromskop viewers were made. Prepared sets of images, called Kromograms, were sold for viewing in them. Alternatively, a Kromskop "triple lantern" projector could be used to illuminate each image with light of the correct color and exactly superimpose them on a projection screen. Special cameras and camera attachments were sold to prospective "Kromskopists" who wanted to create their own Kromograms. The quality of the color was highly praised but the system was not a commercial success. It was discontinued shortly after the 1907 introduction of the Autochrome process, which was simple to use and required no special equipment. In 2009, several Kromogram views of San Francisco made by Ives six months after the 1906 earthquake and fire were discovered while cataloging a collection of Kromograms at the National Museum of American History. They are believed to be the only existing images showing the aftermath of that disaster in natural color (i.e., with color recorded and reproduced photographically rather than added in by hand), as well as the earliest extant natural color photographs of San Francisco.

• Illustration — Kromogram stereo portrait of Mr. Robinson, taken by Ives for William James Herschel, c. 1898. In 1903 Ives patented the parallax stereogram, the first "no glasses" autostereoscopic 3-D display technology. A compound image consisting of fine interlaced vertical slivers of a stereoscopic pair of images was seen in 3-D when viewed through a slightly separated fine grid of correctly spaced alternating opaque and transparent vertical lines, now known as a parallax barrier. The grid allowed each eye to see only the slivers of the image intended for it. • Illustration — Advertisement for plastigrams, 1924 Ives first exhibited such an image in 1901, at which time he stated that the basic concept had occurred to him about sixteen years earlier while working with line screens for the halftone process. In 1904, Auguste Berthier came forward to claim due credit for the first publication of this concept. He had included it near the end of an 1896 article about large-format stereoscopic images. Berthier had also created an extremely coarse and nonfunctional interlaced image for purposes of illustration, but he never reduced the idea to practice or attempted to patent it. Eventually, several other inventors, including Ives' son Herbert, substituted an array of narrow cylindrical lenses for the simple parallax barrier and incorporated more than two viewpoints, creating lenticular parallax panoramagram 3-D images of the type most familiar from 3-D postcards, trading cards and similar novelties, often confused with holograms. The original parallax barrier method is currently (2017) employed in several no-glasses 3-D video displays. Ives also patented the use of parallax barriers for displaying changeable images. As early as 1900, Ives was tinkering with stereoscopic motion pictures. By 1922, he and fellow inventor Jacob Leventhal were producing a popular series of anaglyph 3-D novelty shorts called Plastigrams. The first one was released by Educational Pictures in December 1922, and the later ones by Pathé Films.