New tech not really that new...

As you know by now, we don't just talk about Formula 1 here. Anything particularly geeky, cool, or tech can and will be subject to our musings. Now, if it's particularly old it's even more interesting.

Check this out. Over 100 years ago Nicholus II commissioned a photographer to use his special camera to take photographs of the Russian empire.

What's interesting here is that color photography as we know it was pretty much just being invented and certainly wasn't out and about in the field. Using a technique invented by physicist and mathematician James Maxwell, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii took photographs that are so vivid it's hard to believe they are over 100 years old.

What's interesting to me is that this is basically the same technique digital cameras use today. Capturing an RGB image with what amounts to black and white sensors with color filters in front of them.

Check out the write up at Boston.com here.

Alternatively, you could browse through the entire 2607 image collection at the Library Of Congress here.