Stunning images of pre-First World War Britain have been displayed in Bradford to celebrate a century of colour photography.

An exhibition called The Dawn of Colour at the National Media Museum features previously unseen images of the world a hundred years ago, including photographs of King Edward VII and playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Marking the centenary of the autochrome, the first practical method of colour photography, it includes images of the people, places and things from the Edwardian era that were among the first to be recorded in luminous colour.

They include photographic portraits of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and writer Mark Twain, and pictures of families from Whitby and Oxfordshire to Sri Lanka and Egypt.

There's a rather grumpy-looking little Edwardian boy, clearly unhappy to be posing in a sailor suit and a floral parasol, a young couple in a 1910 motor car and a little girl carrying a pail at the seaside. They bring to life an era previously seen largely in black and white.

The exhibition was opened by Lionel de Rothschild, grandson of Edwardian financier and photographer Lionel de Rothschild, whose own work is featured.

Invented by the Lumiere brothers, autochrome is described as perhaps the most beautiful of all the photographic processes.' Autochromes are glass plates, coated in dyed potato starch, which were viewed by projection or transmitted light.

The Dawn of Colour features original autochromes from the National Media Museum's collections and material borrowed from the Rothschild Archive in London. The images are backlit as they were meant to be seen, bathing the gallery in the light of colour pictures taken before the First World War.

In Edwardian times amateur and professional photographers eagerly embraced the possibilities of autochrome. The exhibition includes images of celebrities, families, landmarks, wildlife and gardens taken by photographers including Lionel de Rothschild and Helen Messinger Murdoch, who captured her round-the-world journey in colour in 1913-14.

"The Lumière brothers are best known as film pioneers with their invention of the cinématographe in 1895, but they had also been experimenting with colour photography for several years," said Colin Harding, the museum's curator of photographic technology. "In 1904 they presented their work to the French Académie des Sciences. Three years later they had perfected their process and had begun the commercial manufacture of autochrome plates."

"On June 10 1907, the first public demonstration of their process took place at the offices of French newspaper L'Illustration. News of the discovery spread quickly and critical response was rapturous. Photographers were keen to try out autochrome plates for themselves. At first demand outstripped supply, it wasn't until the following October that the first, eagerly-awaited, consignment of plates went on sale in Britain."

The Dawn of Colour: Celebrating the Centenary of the Autochrome runs at the National Media Museum until September 23.