I've always been interested in photography, and today belong to the 15 Craigside Photo Club.  Club?  Not sure what we are.   In any case, I love colors in general, and my very favorite course in college was Color.  When did color photography begin?  Here is a You Tube lecture on the  History of Color Photograph y.  Starts slowly, but provides most of the technical details I will not cover.  Otherwise: Some say our understanding of light and color began with Englishman  Isaac Newton  when he published his experiments in 1672. But  real color photography  came nearly 200 years later when in 1861 ( note:  Civil War in America ) Scottish physicist,  James Clerk Maxwell  ( he was that person who is responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation...all those equations ).   He showed that all the colors you see can be made by an appropriate mixture of only three colors:  red, green ...