The revolutionary invention of autochromes changed photography. As those pictures decay, they're revealing a new kind of ...

The team’s film was made up of alternating layers of titanium dioxide and aluminum dioxide, above a thicker layer of rough frosted glass, which has a disordered texture to scatter the light.

Conventional color films work in much the same way. But just below each layer of Polacolor’s silver halide is a layer containing strange double molecules synthesized by Polaroid’s chemists.