( CNN ) -- Instagram is a decidedly modern invention , but back in your great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents ' day , `` Photochroms '' were the functional equivalent . Photochroms combined emerging photographic technology and the painterly techniques of the old masters to provide technicolor glimpses of the Great Lakes , Old South , Wild West , and Pacific coast . These dreamlike vistas have been collected for the first time in a volume called An American Odyssey by Marc Walter and Sabine ArquÃ© . The oversize , $ 200 book is a sampling of the 100,000 Photochroms created by the Detroit Photographic Company between the company 's formation in 1888 and its closure in 1924 . The Photochrom Process . Photochrom photographers would start the process by coating a printing plate with a light-sensitive emulsion and then exposing a glass plate photo negative onto it . Unlike modern four-color printing process that can represent millions of colors by overlapping tiny dots of cyan , magenta , yellow , and black ink , the inks mixed for Photochroms were mixed by hand in an attempt to perfectly match the yellow-green sunblasted scrub brush that surrounds the Grand Canyon or the aquamarine ocean water of the Bahamas . The photographers would erase the entire plate except for the area reserved for that specific color and make 10-15 more plates to fill out the composition . Photographic details were preserved , but an emotive , if slightly artificial , range of color was added . The Detroit Photographic Company toured large Photochroms on trains and the U.S. Government supercharged their spread by passing a law that allowed Photochromic postcards to be sent for a penny , rather than the going rate of two cents . Like the locomotives of that era , labor-intensive Photochroms lost steam as the first color film debuted in 1907 , and Kodak made color snapshots widely available with the release of Kodachrome cameras in 1935 . However , as a testament to the charm of the technique , the last Photochrom factory did n't close its doors until 1970 . An American Odyssey is available from Taschen . Read more from WIRED : . 30 Years After Chernobyl 's Meltdown , Gripping Photos Expose the Human Fallout . How the NSA Could Bug Your Powered-Off Phone , and How to Stop Them . The Eerie , Crumbling Bunkers of the Nazis ' Atlantic Wall . Subscribe to WIRED magazine for less than $ 1 an issue and get a FREE GIFT ! Click here ! Copyright 2011 Wired.com .
Photocroms were the functional equivalent of Instagram in 1888 . They were produced using emerging photographic techniques and technologies . Some of the images feature the Great Plains , Old South , Old West , and Pacific coast . A number of images have been published for the first time in a new volume .