[1] A | Nomenclature of Colors | for Naturalists, | and | Compendium
of Useful Knowledge | for Ornithologists. | By | Robert Ridgway, |
Curator, Department of Birds, United States National Museum. | With ten
colored plates and seven plates | of outline illustrations. | Boston: |
Little, Brown, and Company. | 1886. | (12mo., pp. 129, pls. 17.)
The subject of color and color nomenclature discussed on pages 15-58.
Plates i-x, inclusive, represent 186 named colors, hand-painted
(stencilled).
[2] Titles of several books on the subject which are especially
recommended to the lay student of chromatology are given at the end of
this text.
[3] See _Science_, June 9, 1893, and _Nature_, Vol. LII, No. 1347, Aug.
22, 1895, pp. 390-392.
[4] According to Aubert more than 1000 hues are distinguishable in the
spectrum, though among them all the hues between violet and red are
wanting.
[5] That is to say, the practical limit for pictorial representation of
the colors in their various modifications.
[6] Milton Bradley: Elementary Color, p. 18.
[7] See colored figure on frontispiece.
[8] See the colored figure on the frontispiece of this work, which
clearly illustrates this method of color measurement. Larger disks
of spectrum red, green, and violet are interlocked and adjusted so
that they present, respectively, 32, 42, and 26 per cent. of the
circumference; superimposed on these is a single smaller disk of
neutral gray, and on this two still smaller disks of black and white,
the former occupying 79, the latter 21, per cent. of the area. The
result of this combination of colors, when the disks are rapidly
revolved, is that the entire surface becomes a uniform neutral gray
precisely like the middle disk, which blends so completely with the
color inside and outside its limits that no trace of division can be
detected. Hence, neutral gray equals a combination of red 32, green
42, and violet 26 per cent., and also equals a combination of black
79 and white 21 per cent. As further illustrating the point, it may
be mentioned that not only does the above-mentioned combination
of the three primary colors equal neutral gray but so also does
the combination of any color ("secondary" or "tertiary" as well as
primary) with its complementary, though the darkness or lightness
of the gray varies somewhat, as the following table shows:
Spectrum Color. Complementary Color. Equivalent Gray.
Name. Per Cent. Per Cent. Composition. Black. White.
Red 44 56 Blue 41 + Green 59. 72.5 27.5
Orange 28.5 71.5 Blue 51.5 + Green 48.5. 69 31
Yellow 33 67 Blue 60.5 + Violet 39.5. 64 36
Green 51 49 Red 57.5 + Violet 42.5. 73 27
Blue 64 36 Yellow 82 + Orange 18. 62 37
Violet 62.5 37.5 Yellow 69 + Green 31. 61.5 38.5
[9] The number is doubled so that every other one represents an
intermediate hue not shown in color.
[10] Owing to the circumstance that spectrum orange does not, at
least when mixed with gray, fairly represent a medium hue between red
and orange, being much nearer the former, a hue much near to yellow
(yellow-orange, No. 15) has been selected.
[11] For satisfactory color-wheel work it is necessary to discard
practically all the so-called artists' colors, as being much too dull
to even approximately represent the colors of the spectrum, and to
substitute carefully selected aniline or coal-tar dyes, of which,
fortunately, there is a very large number of remarkable purity of hue.
Indeed, the work of most color-physicists is vitiated by their use of
such crude colors as vermilion, carmine, scarlet-lake, chrome yellow,
emerald green, Prussian blue, etc. (For a list of dyes and pigments
used in preparing the Maxwell disks representing the thirty-six colors
of the chromatic scale, see pages 26, 27.)
[12] In fixing the exact position or wave-length of the spectrum
colors considerable latitude is allowable, the element of "personal
equation"—that is, difference in the conception of different persons
as to just where the reddest red, greenest green, etc., are located,
accounting for the considerable disagreement among chromatologists as
to the wave-lengths. The following table, showing the average, mean,
and extreme wave-length of each of the spectrum colors as given by
nine or more authorities together with those of the present work (as
determined by Dr. P. G. Nutting, Associate Physicist of the U. S.
Bureau of Standards) is of interest in this connection:
Average Extremes Mean
This work. of 9-12 of 9-12 of 9-12
authorities. authorities. authorities.
Red 644 6770 6440-7028 6734 (10)
Orange 598 ± 2 6074 5892-6300 6096 (9)
Yellow 577 ± 1 5786 5640-5850 5745 (10)
Green 520 ± 10 5235 5050-5335 5193 (11)
Blue 473 ± 3 4738 4520-4861 4680 (12)
Violet 410 4176 4050-4330 4190 (10)
From this table it will be seen that the red of this work is
appreciably more orange than that of others, the orange slightly more
yellowish, and the violet a little less bluish than the average;
but the author is assured by Dr. Nutting that these standards are
exceptionally accurate.
[13] The percentages are given in tables on pages 23 and 25.
[14] That is to say, theoretically. Unfortunately it seems to be beyond
the colorists' skill to reproduce true shades of the pure colors, all
showing a more or less decided admixture of gray, resulting in a series
of broken or dull shades. (See pages 23 and 24.)
[15] Although only 1115 different colors are actually shown on
the plates the system is really equivalent to the presentation of
considerably more than 4000 distinguishable and designatable colors.
[16] The Theory of Color (American edition, 1876), p. 99.
[17] In the present work the possibility of variation between
different copies is wholly eliminated by a very different process of
reproduction. Each color, for the entire edition, is painted uniformly
on large sheets of paper from a single mixture of pigments, these
sheets being then cut into the small squares which represent the colors
on the plates.
[18] See Rood: Modern Chromatics, pages 50-52.
[19] Some criticisms of Popular Color Definitions and Suggestions for
a better Color Nomenclature. Milton Bradley Co., Springfield, Mass.
(Small pamphlet of 15 pages).
[20] Milton Bradley: Elementary Color, p. 25.
[21] Exception has been taken in a recent work ("A Color Notation,"
by A. H. Munsell) to the use of the term tone in this connection, on
the ground that its proper use belongs to music, and the term _value_
is substituted. The same line of reasoning would, however, certainly
require the discarding of _chromatic scale_ as a term of music
nomenclature, since its derivation is clearly from color (chroma).
Furthermore, the word "value" is even more elastic in its application
than tone, and, all things considered, the present writer, at least,
fails to see that any improvement is made by the proposed change.
[22] The term _chromatic scale_ has unfortunately been appropriated for
a very different use (in music); nevertheless it is strictly correct
in the present sense while in the other it is not, though firmly
established by long usage. The term _spectrum scale_ is not adequate,
as a substitute, because the spectrum series of colors is incomplete
through absence of the hues connecting violet with red, which are
necessary to show the full scale of pure colors and hues.
[23] The distinctions of color or hue diminishing in proportion to the
increased admixture of gray, each alternate color or hue, with its
scale (vertical) of tones, is omitted from the third and fourth series;
while in the fifth the color differentiation is so greatly reduced that
only the six spectrum colors (dulled by admixture of 95.5 per cent. of
neutral gray), together with purple (the intermediate between violet
and red) are given; a yellow orange hue being substituted for spectrum
orange because it is more exactly intermediate in hue between red and
yellow.
[24] J. J. Müller found that a mixture of the orange and violet rays
of the spectrum produced a whitish red (Rood, "Modern Chromatics," p.
129). The author of the present work, without being at the time aware
of this, produced an absolutely pure red (but of reduced intensity)
by mixture of either orange and violet (orange 63.5, violet 36.5 per
cent. = red 85 + white 15 per cent.), or from orange and the violet-red
which is complementary to green (violet-red 51, orange 49 per cent.),
the latter equaling red 89 + white 11 per cent; the mixtures being made
on a color-wheel with Maxwell disks representing the pure colors of the
present work. The red resulting from either of these mixtures on the
color-wheel is far purer than the blue resulting from mixture of green
and violet, and incomparably more so than the yellow resulting from
mixture of either red and green or orange and green. Consequently, if
the same results would come from mixing orange and violet light, it is
difficult to understand how red can be a primary color _according to
the accepted definition_.
[25] Rood: Modern Chromatics, p. 34.
With the single exception of Vanderpoel (Color Problems, p. 28,
plates 3, 4, where yellow is given first in order of luminosity) all
authorities on color-physics that I have been able to consult very
singularly ignore yellow entirely in their treatment of the subject of
luminosity.
[26] All quotations here are from Milton Bradley's "Elementary Color,"
except where otherwise noted.
[27] As determined by Dr. P. G. Nutting, Associate Physicist, U. S.
Bureau of Standards.
[28] See Rood, Modern Chromatics, pages 34, 35.
[29] The aniline or coal-tar dyes named are all of the manufacture of
Dr. G. Grübler and Co., Leipzig, Germany, unless otherwise stated. (See
Preface, page ii.)