Colour photographs, now an integral part of everyday life, are given a new dimension in this clear, wide-ranging view of the development of colour photographic techniques. From the early 19th century, when photography began, there was a quest to accurately reproduce the colours as well as the forms seen through the photographer's lens. Brian Coe analyzes the numerous innovations, some of which bore fruit while others led nowhere, tracing their major lines of development. He takes the story up to the 1940s, by which time all the principles of modern colour photography had been established.