The Lumiere brothers held the first public demonstration of their invention in 1907 and began selling autochrome plates shortly thereafter, making color photography more widely available than it had ever been before.
Here are 15 autochrome photos that show life in the early 1900s in color.
Etheldreda Janet Laing studied art in Cambridge and became an amateur photographer, often using her daughters as her subjects.
She photographed her daughters wearing sun hats on the balcony.
Alfred Stieglitz often featured his daughter in his portrait work as well.
Alfred Stieglitz/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
This couple was photographed in color around 1910.
They were photographed having tea in their garden.
Two farm workers were photographed sometime between 1910 and 1915.
The woman on the right is holding a milking stool and has a bucket at her feet and likely worked as a milkmaid.
Arthur E. Morton, honorary secretary of the Society of Colour Photographers, photographed a cobbler in 1912.
The cobbler is repairing the soles of old boots while the woman on the left crochets.
Morton captured the charm of a country home in Worcestershire.
He also photographed a man posing with a besom.
A besom is a broom made of twigs tied together.
He dabbled in still life photography, too.
Morton photographed fruits and drinks in a still life portrait.
This portrait by British amateur photographer Emma Barton, also known as Mrs. G. A. Barton, shows a woman sitting in a garden surrounded by colorful flowers.
A newspaper seller was photographed on the streets of Reims, France, in 1917.
Back then, that was the only way to read the news.
A girl is shown peering into a bakery and confectionary called Billings.
The photo was likely taken in Billing, UK.
A Mongolian yurt was photographed in autochrome in 1913.
Unknown/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
Not much else is known about this photo.
Heres what the entrance to the Maharajas Palace in Jaipur, India, looked like in 1926.
Jules Gervais-Courtellemont/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
William A. Gullick photographed his wife and daughters wearing different colors at home in Sydney, Australia.
William Applegate Gullick/State Library of New South WalesWikimedia Commons/Public Domain
