Early Color Photos

Usually we think of the first color photos appearing in the period of the 1930s.

But there were at least two cases of true color photography from more than two decades before color film was developed. Here, for example, are some Russian children on a hillside in 1909.

These are not hand-tinted black and white photographs, but true color image captures. The image above shows hay storage in winter. Note the chromatic aberrations from the moving smoke.

The technique, developed by a Russian photographer, used three separate cameras in rapid succession. One plate was filtered for blue, another for red, and another for green light, and they were later composited.

This panoramic view shows the city of Tiflis (now Tblisi) in the Republic of Georgia in 1910.

Around the same time, the Lumière brothers in France developed a workable color film using dyed potato flakes. Here is an example of a photo of a horsemeat butcher shop using that process from around WW1, link:

Russian images courtesy Library of Congress. More information here.
Thanks, Chris!