Quoting widescreenforever:

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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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Tinted movies were the general rule all along. We didn't want a situation where most movies from 1910 were in color. That would defeat the purpose of the field.

should that read were NOT in color...  ??  don't know of any color films before 1926..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Silent_films_in_color

I should add that early color processes had serious technical problems and also were rather limited in what colors they could display. These problems were solved very gradually. This is why color was introduced in 1912, but didn't become common until 1935 or so when three-strip Technicolor was introduced. This displayed a good gamut of colors, but still was considerably more difficult and expense to use than black-and-white stock. It wasn't until about 1966 when people stopped using black-and-white for anything but artistic reasons. Until the advent of cheap HD camcorders, it still got used for budgetary reasons on no-budget stuff.

Tinting was a method of pseudo-coloring for films that couldn't deal with the logistics or expense of shooting in color and mostly disappeared around the time good color stocks were introduced. This excludes tinting the whole film sepia, which is done for different reasons.