Tsar Nicholas II funded Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii to survey different parts of Russia by snapping a series of color photographs.
The only problem was, color photgraphy as we know it, did not exist. To solve this, he used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in a rapid succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The results are mind-blowing. See more here, via The Big Picture.
