Levi Hill (26 February 1816 − 9 February 1865)[1] was an American minister in upstate New York who claimed in 1851 that he had invented a color photographic process. Borrowing terms previously introduced in France, Hill called his process "heliochromy" and the photographs that it produced "heliochromes", but by analogy to the naming of the then-current daguerreotype process after its inventor Louis Daguerre, Hill's color photographs were soon being called "Hillotypes".[2] Hill's work was met with skepticism during his lifetime, then for more than a hundred years after his death histories of photography routinely dismissed it as a complete fraud. Later researchers found that his very difficult process did in fact have a limited ability to reproduce the colors of nature.
- ^ Levi L. Hill at Luminous-Lint website.
- ^ Solbert, Oscar N.; Newhall, Beaumont; Card, James g., eds. (May 1952). "The Misadventures of L.L, Hill" (PDF). Image, Journal of Photography of George Eastman House. 1 (5). Rochester, N.Y.: International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House Inc.: 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 22 June 2014.