Wilson Markle (born September 2, 1938) is a Canadian engineer who invented the

film colorization Film colorization (American English; or colourisation [British English], or colourization [Canadian English and Oxford English]) is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia, or other monochrome moving-picture imag ...

process in 1970.Coloring Old Movies: Foes See Red, Backers See Green
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Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

'', 29 August 1986 His first company, Image Transform, colored pictures from the Apollo space program to make a full-color television presentation for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

. His method used computers to assign predetermined colors to shades of gray in each scene. In 1983, he founded Colorization Inc., which was co-owned by Hal Roach Studios and International HRS Industries. The word "colorization" later became a generic name.

Patents

An application for the first patent on the process was made by Colorization Inc. on 11 July 1983, listing Wilson Markle and Christopher Mitchell as inventors. It was issued on 1 December 1987 (US Patent 4710805).US Patent 4710805 - Method of, and apparatus for, modifying luminance levels of a black and white video signal
- WikiPatents, Inc.

References

1938 births Living people Canadian engineers {{Canada-engineer-stub