Color Theory History

By Adrian and Krisna Color Spectrum and the 1700’s • Isaac Newton • Our modern theory of light and color started with Newton.

• He was the first person to really understand how a rainbow was made and the first to make a color wheel.

• The understanding of color theory started with Newton in the 1660’s doing different experiments. An important experiment that Newton performed was seng up a prism by a window as the sunlight hit the prism the prism projected a color spectrum. Color Spectrum and the 1700’s •Color Wheel Model • The prism experiment helped Newton built a concept of what is known as the color wheel.

• He arranged colors around the circumstance of a circle (boom le), this helped arsts because it arranged the primary colors opposite to their complementary colors.

• Claude Boute’s color model (right) was the first to represent Newton’s idea.

Tobias Mayer and the 1700’s

• In 1758 Tobias Mayer did a color triangle diagram and he began with 3 main pure colors, red, blue and yellow.

• He put them on each corner creang a triangle shape. The colors gradate towards the center, showing that 2 colors can create another one. Schaffer and the 1700’s • Jacob Chrisan Schaffer

• 1769 Schaffer (right) who was naturalist and inventor invented his own color system.

• He explained how when blue, red, and yellow are combined they create mulple shades in between. His color system shows color combinaons within a color group.

Goethe's Color Theory and the 1800’s

• Johann Wolfgang Van Geothe (1810) was a writher and scienst • He studied the psychological impact that colors had an people’s emoons and feelings.

• Geothe created different theories about each color. For example he suggested that yellow since is the closes color to the light and is a bright color it creates a serene, and joyful feeling • Newton believed color wasn’t a physiological process but a measurement according to white light, making color a physical object. • Geothe on the other hand believed that color wasn’t just a physical object or a measurement of light but a mixture of light and dark. Runge and Chevreul 1800’s

• In 1807 Painter Oo Runge made a color wheel model taking the primary colors and adding black and white to demonstrate other colors.

• He created a 3D model color sphere (right).

• In 1839 Michel Eugene Chevreul took Runge's idea and arranged 72 colors into a hemisphere ,similar to Mayer's arrangement.

• Chevreul also came up with a phenomenon called the Chevreul's Illusion, 2 same colors of different intensies are placed next to each other, and they seem to be brighter at the edge where they meet. Munsell and the 1900’s

• In 1915 Albert Henry Munsell came up with a cylindrical system model showing hue, value, and chroma (saturaon). • His model described the colors in a scienfic manner. • His color wheel helped launch other color wheels. • In his color model chroma is demonstrated horizontal, value is vercal, and hue is shown around the model. THE NATURAL COLOR SYSTEM, 1900’s

• In 1979 Ewald Hering came up with the Natural Color System. • The color model was based on the six psychological primary colors of yellow, blue, red, green, white and black. • The color wheel that was created was not designed for mixing colors but for organizing them in relaon to how they are experienced by people. • It proved to be useless to designers and arst because it had a more natural approach when it came down to color mixture. • Today, It is the most recognized color-matching system around the world.