The Code is not Coloured

Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity

John Henry Martin

A thesis in the fulfilment of the requirement of the degree of Master of Design (Honours) undertaken at the School of Design Studies, Faculty of the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales. 2012 ORIGINALITY STATEMENT

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The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity ii

Abstract

Do we need a philosophy of colour technology? Automation of reproduction technology will relegate graphic design to the ranking of visual art, a fate that crafts such as weaving, ceramics and glass have suffered. The twentieth century saw the demise of specialist fields such as drafting, woodcut, engraving, etching, letterpress, gravure, lithography, photography and web. Software will democratise graphic design processes, allowing everyone to be a graphic artist. The automation and democratisation of colour reproduction have come to fruition as digital workflow changes the graphic designer’s role. This change makes apparent the history and effect of colour reproduction; it is an unexplored discipline, the printed word thus far dominating graphic art theory and history. Real world practice involves antagonisms between art directors, graphic designers, prepress men, printers and clients. If your average human is to be a graphic artist, our accumulated colour cognisance requires sharing. Technological change indicates that colour reproduction had traditions, methodologies and expertise not widely known. It is the aim of this paper to lay bare this colour history.

Colour and light in science, philosophy, optics, printing, visual arts, photography and graphics have culturally fixed and reductive histories, requiring recovery, examination and collation. When a technology becomes successful, it becomes invisible; its processes are blackboxed and visible to specialists alone; only inputs and outputs are generally apparent. A colour technology history requires these blackboxed processes to be unpacked. Primary sources in this history such as research papers, biographies, and trade journal accounts of methods are classified as events, instead of historical dates and fact markers, to demonstrate an unbroken continuum of human thought and invention that is traceable to thought’s earliest recording. Corporatised promotional guides and handbooks supplement the history, despite their bias for appearing scientific and successful, with knowledge presented as a body of unquestionable facts. Art histories mark the end of the pursuit of verisimilitude as coinciding with the invention of photography; however, graphic art imaging continued the inheritance of this pursuit. Automated exactly repeatable colour verisimilitude was its nirvana, achievable through mathematicophysical descriptions of colour science and measurement. This thesis explores the creation of this code by theories and practices of scientists, philosophers, graphic artists and twentieth-century corporations and international authorities. Subsumed into our machines it has led to our technorealist faith in technology and to the demise of scepticism regarding colour realism.

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Contents

iii Abstract iv Contents v Acknowledgments

1 1. Introduction

19 2. Repeatable Colour Verisimilitude

51 3. Design from Colour

111 4. Science and Colour

151 5. Colour Fixation

223 6. Blackboxing Colour

262 7. Conclusion

267 8. Glossary

277 Appendix: Timeline

345 Appendix: Human Research Ethics Advisory (HREA) approval

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity iv

Acknowledgments

I have been indebted in the preparation of this thesis to my supervisors, Wendy Parker and Associate Professor Leong Chan from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, for their patient listening of my incoherent ramblings about craftmanship, theory, poesis, techne, episteme, opponency and trichromacy. Their kindness, support and academic experience have been invaluable to me, this work would otherwise have not been possible.

I am grateful to Digital Pre Press Supervisor Peter Rimmer from Offset Alpine; Michael Wallace from Inkmatters Pty Ltd, Brooke Harrison from Pod Print Pty Ltd; Marcus Piper and Christey Johansson from one8one7; and Professor Stephen Dain from the Faculty of Science School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of New South Wales all of whom shared their colour experiences with me. These discussions assisted in my finding the direction for this work.

Many thanks to Margaret Rose, who patiently assited with proofreading the text.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity v

Figure 1: René Descartes, Treatise on Man, drawn by Gerard van Gutschoven, 1664.1

1. Introduction

And so in the vessel of the head, they first of all put a face in which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the providence of the soul, and they appointed this part, which has authority, to be by nature the part which is in front. And of the organs they first contrived the eyes to give light… – Plato, Timaeus, 360BCE2

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 1

All things are set on a background

“Paint a few good pictures instead of hundreds,” my mother reminded me my dealer Ray Hughes had remarked; “I have done nothing that way,” said I. Thomas Young, “The Last Polymath” in his Course of Lectures strove to catalogue all the sciences and mechanical arts of his day. Denis Sepper in Goethe Contra Newton describes Johann von Goethe’s colour science as “naive induction,” because his Zur Farbenlehre historical section attempted to outline all known theories of colour to his day.3 Leong Chan, my first art director and now master’s supervisor, patiently shared his graphics knowledge with me. Not forgetting this I strove to share my own. Wendy Parker, my supervisor, tells of the apprentice tradition that sustained workshop knowledge: at a master’s death an apprentice inherited the workshop, tools, and his wife! My twenty-first century colour management hell inspired this thesis because printer’s first proofs had become contract proofs. So file accuracy required ascertaining before allowing then to leave my office – I had inherited the prepress craft without the knowledge. I bought an Epson Stylus Pro 4000 and EFI Designer Edition RIP, the salesman installing it pointed to ∆E colour matching function that was to solve all my troubles. ∆ in mathematics means difference or change and E (Empfindung in German) means sensation. This thesis is my attempt to understand colour difference sensations. I apologise now – I have not the genius of Young, and as with Goethe the examination of science versus art and object versus subject has led to an overblown and unruly colour story. I could have told an easier story, but I have not changed.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 2

A Philosophy of Technology

Figure 2: Josef Albers, Interaction of Color: Color Triangles (Goethe Triangle), 1963.4

Figure 3: Munsell Book of Colour as reprinted in Penrose Annual, 1927.5

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Figure 4: William Henry Fox Talbot, Top: Three of the very small cameras used by Talbot 1835-39. Bottom: Three of Talbot’s larger cameras. Right: Kodak VR35 a 35mm point & shoot camera in 1986 after a 17-year hiatus from manufacturing.6

Figure 5: JAC Yule: Left, Optics of halftone according to the penumbra theory, 1941. Right, Light distribution behind a screen calculated according to diffraction theory, 1943.7

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Figure 6: Ewald Hering: Zur Lehre vom Lichtsinne, 1878.8 Top: Hue circle with four fundamental colours Bottom: Hue mixtures, Published by Wilhelm Engelmann in Leipzig.

Do graphic artists need a philosophy of colour technology? Would graphic designers benefit from one? Graphic artists in this thesis are defined as anyone who reproduces images from a master. This is a practice that is moving into the hands of average humans. Anyone with a digital camera and a Facebook account can be a graphic artist. There have been many kinds of master: JPEGs, HTML, Kodacolor prints, lithographic stones or letterpress matrixes. Graphic designers are a subset of the grouping graphic artist being a profession with a focus on message delivery and aesthetics. Graphic artists intuitively negotiate science, philosophy, art and design. Light and colour have long been the playthings of philosophers and scientists a pursuit that will be shown led to severance of subjectivity from objectivity and the creation of modernity. More importantly, the contribution of the graphic arts in this dialogue is overlooked.

Continuing automation and standardisation of reproductive technologies will make graphic design a redundant profession by mid-century. Graphic artists are a pig-headed and stubborn lot; they value their own techniques and subjective views on colour more than two millennia of research. An attitude illustrated by Peter Kohn in Colour: Do You Measure Up? A 2009 ProPrint article which states “…that perhaps only 20 or 30

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businesses, out of about 4000 in Australia, have some form of colour management regime, and that is a long way behind Europe…”. In 1956, RB Fishenden in Penrose Annual bemoaned the industry’s failure to appreciate its own transformation, noting that: “…printing is no longer a craft but a highly specialised industry which calls for a knowledge of scientific backgrounds and this is what technology means.” Early experiments in colour reproduction have two categories: objective and subjective. Present-day technologies are subjective, they succeeded because object colour cannot be measured; however, a subject’s colour responses can be. Today, these measurements are now coded and blackboxed into our machines. Isaac Newton famously wrote: “For the rays to speak properly are not coloured,” and so too is the code not coloured.9

Digital technology’s movement of colour master creation into the hands of amateurs has decimated professional colourists. Colour professionals controlled when to cease “excellence-seeking” and instead “satisfice” (suffice and satisfy). When scribes moved from the scriptorium to the printer’s office because of the advent of movable type this brought about social change and the democratisation of knowledge. Colour is becoming democratised. Little was revolutionary about Johannes Gutenberg’s invention: he used a wine press known since ancient Rome; he replaced woodcut masters with cast jewellery punches. These were reproducible in “unlimited quantities”. His achievement was to change printing from a handicraft to an industrial process. Similarly, in our time nothing has been invented, the science and technology of light and optics are fused with printing and photography. Amateurs are no longer dependent on proprietary chemical processes like Kodachrome to produce coloured images. In our digital age, the Internet would be the purview of academics if confined to text, its popularity would be doubtful in black and white — the reproduction of colour has led to the information revolution. Colour amateurs expect a one-to-one relationship between the coloured and the perceived world and between the coloured world perceived and reproduced; whereas colour scientists, philosophers, graphic artists, and photographers do not. The social impact of movable type on society was not perceived until the sixteen hundreds, the end of the incunabula. Today, within the incunabula of the digitisation, automation, and fusion of the technologies of colour, vision, light, optics, and printing, the social effect is unknowable.10

There exists a multitude of books on printing methods and procedures published prior to the first half of the twentieth century; most are notable for an absence of colour discussion. Photography publications would outnumber these; however, the

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corporatisation of technique usually restricts their discourses to superficial topics like aesthetics and semantics. Reviewing Penrose Annuals during their more technical period, as edited by William Gamble from 1895 to 1933, then Richard Bertram Fishenden from 1934 to 1956, reveals that Eastman Kodak solved the technical issues of colour process printing and published its results in The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction, 1937.11 Printing colour halftones from original art or life was a specialist skill practised mostly by interested craftsmen until the first scanner technology appeared just after World War II. By 1968, Penrose Annual observed:

Everywhere were signs of automation: new computer typesetting machines, new colour scanners for in-plant use, programmed enlargers, semi-automatic cameras, film transport systems to automatic processors, automatic platemaking equipment for lithographic plates, automatic electronic engravers for gravure cylinders and numerous instruments for measurement and control – the basic tools for automation.12

The 1985 reprint of RM Burch’s Colour Printing and Colour Printers, 1910 claims that this is “…the only definitive history of colour printing techniques”. It is an account, with a British bias, of colour printing from fifteenth-century woodblock up to the invention of process printing. Britain attracted printers due the strong patent laws, becoming the centre of the industrial revolution. Burch scoured a multitude of sources to cobble his confusing and convoluted history together; date errors and misspelt names throw doubt on his accuracy. This indicates that the history of colour reproduction has an enormous research gap.13

Joseph Solomon Friedman’s History of Color Photography, 1944 references extensively EJ Wall’s The History of Three-Color Photography, 1925. Primarily an account of mechanical three-colour photographic techniques, it shows that little distinguished a photographer from a printer. Friedman defines the two approaches to colour photography: subjective and objective. The Lippman process was objective as it recorded the interference of light waves. Subjective processes mimic the cones of the retina; the first commercially successful process was the Lumière’s Autochrome, and one of the most successful was Kodachrome by Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes.14

Louis Walton Sipley — director of the American Museum of Photography — wrote A Half Century of Color in 1951. The museum became the Sipley/3M collection now housed at the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House in Rochester NY. The collection is significant for possessing the work of Frederick Eugene Ives, the inventor of mechanical and optical halftone. The book draws upon Sipley’s recollections, collection, notes, Inland Printer journal, and his American print and photographic

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industry contacts. It is conversational in style with few citations, and like Burch has a local bias to firms from New York and Chicago.15 Klimschs Jahrbuch des Graphischen Gewerbes, the German Penrose, has been excluded as it has not been translated and my learning German was outside the scope of this work.

Purely technical information on colour reproduction in this account are drawn from RWG Hunt’s The Reproduction of Colour, first published in 1957. It is a time capsule of dead technologies even in its 2005 sixth edition. In addition, I have used Gary G Field’s Color and its Reproduction, 2004; and his Color Essentials, 2009 series reprinted from the TAGA Newsletter of Graphic Arts Technical Foundation. He discusses and advises on objective and subjective approaches to colour management in digital and conventional environments. An authoritative encyclopaedia of print technology is Helmut Kipphan’s Handbook of Print Media, 2001 – an excellent source for the application of the theory of colour management.16

Johannes Itten’s The Art of Color, 1961 is notable for its not being reproducible by process printing till 1975. Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color, 1963 required screen- printing to reproduce its colours (Figure 2). Both were teachers of the Bauhaus preliminary course (Vorkurs), with Walter Gropius dismissing Itten and replacing him with Albers. Itten has pretentions to scientific method but is already little out of date in 1961. His colour theory, as taught to him by Adolf Hölzel, draws on Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, 1810; Arthur Schopenhauer’s On Vision and Colours, 1816; Otto Runge’s Colour Sphere, 1810 and ME Chevreul’s The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors, 1864. Wilhelm Ostwald’s colour sphere from his Colour Primer, 1916 is the basis for Itten’s sphere. Ostwald’s ideas are derived from Ewald Hering’s Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, 1878 which describes the opponent primaries: red/green, yellow/blue and black/white (Figure 6). An artist, Itten used instead pigment mixtures of blue/orange and yellow/violet. Both teachers were interested in the systematic education of painters on subjective colour effects such as simultaneous and successive contrast, after-images, optical mixtures and figure field contrasts, plus colour impressions, expressions, symbolisms and harmonies. Albers directed his students through trial and error, only informing them of colour science and models at the end of his course. He approved only of Albert Henry Munsell’s colour tree, dismissing Ostwald’s sphere and Faber Birren’s colour system. Along with Itten and Albers every art school library has or should have Munsell’s Color Notation, 1913.17 AB Klein describes its significance in Penrose Annual, 1927 (Figure 3):

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A physical science is impossible without the means for measurement classification, standardization, and nomenclature, all demand a method of measuring. It’s singular how long delayed has been the satisfactory means of classifying, standardizing, and naming of colour perceptions.18

Munsell, an art teacher, developed an interest in the science after reading Ogden Rood’s Modern Chromatics, 1879 a book also reputed to have inspired the Impressionist movement. Aspiring to produce a decimal system, he created a ten-part grey scale that he termed “value” (luminosity). His genius was to align hues to their appropriate value rather than mid-grey like Runge and Ostwald. He coined the term “chroma” to describe intensity of hue (saturation). His colour model is an open-ended tree-like structure that allowed the addition of new colours (Figure 3). Its success came via its adoption by the National Bureau of Standards and its investigations by the Optical Society of America.19

We have reached the meat in the sandwich: Munsell’s subjective perceptual colour system becomes a standard for the creation of an objective system of colour measurement. Rolf Kuehni’s Color Space and Its Divisions, 2003 and Color Ordered, 2008, the later co-authored with Andreas Schwarz, are historical accounts of colour systems and measurement. The Color Space thesis is about the difficulty in developing practical colour models for human colour vision. Kuehni’s mantra calls for colour descriptions with Cartesian coordinates instead of multidimensional models of unwieldy mathematics. Color Ordered is an encyclopaedia of theories and models, with commentaries showing that Aristotle’s linear seven-colour model became Isaac Newton’s two-dimensional circle, and that Newton evolved into the three-dimensional models of Runge, Munsell, and Ostwald and later multidimensional perceptual models. John Gage’s Colour and Culture, as well as Colour and Meaning, are astounding in their scholarship and their accounts of theories and practices of colour from the pre-Socratic scholars and the painter Apelles, and up to modernism and abstraction in the visual arts. Gage demonstrates that colour theory and practice are culturally constructed and changeable through time and space. Colour and Culture has inspired this quest – for it concluded its account with abstract painting without mention of modern technologies; it left me asking… what don’t I know?20

Paul D Sherman’s Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century describes the creation of the modern subject of vision science. The instigator of the story is Thomas Young, who gave biological attributes to the artist’s triad and linked this to his “undulatory theory of light”. Hunter Günther Grassman, combining mathematics and linguistics, then proved that three visual receptors are commensurate with Newton’s Opticks. David Brewster then

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sidetracked the three-colour theory by proposing light was constituted of three overlapping spectra. This error inspired Herman von Helmholtz to prove that Brewster was misled by subjective colour illusions. Observations of additive and subtractive colour had become a jumbled mess of theories over the centuries, until Helmholtz unravelled them. Once unravelled James Clerk Maxwell, notes Sherman, “…did nothing less than transform a qualitative science into a quantitative one with a whole new range of experimental techniques.” Sean F Johnston’s A History of Light and Colour Measurement puts a human face on twentieth-century colour science and measurement. Its development is tied to the rise of technical professions, scientific cultures and institutional growth. He reveals that the Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage 1931 colour standard was a pragmatic and unsatisfactory solution. Johnston notes: “The primary point of contention for colorimetry was not the production of facts but the production of a coherent subject, …the properties of light and colour were necessarily shared between the eye, instruments and energy.”21

SH Steinberg’s Five Hundred Years of Printing, 1955 focuses on movable type and its cultural impact and makes scant reference to colour. Otto M Lilien’s Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1985 supplies an authoritative account of the first trichromatic printer who was practising in the time of Newton. William M Ivins’s Prints and Visual Communication, 1969 proposes that verisimilitude in Western visual arts was a cultural bias that only became apparent when photography replaced engraving. Prints are “exactly repeatable pictorial statements”, and these, he argues, affected knowledge, science, and technology more than writing. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 1979 written by Elizabeth Eisenstein argues that scholars regularly neglect the impact of applied technology. Printing’s incunabula straddled the medieval and renaissance humanist movements is an “agent” instituting cross-cultural interchange; standardisation; amplification and reinforcement through repeatability, preservation, rationalisation, codification, and cataloguing of knowledge; plus the collection and correction of data. She termed these effects “fixity”, remarking that: “…it is as if mankind had suddenly obtained a trustworthy memory instead of one that was fickle and deceitful.” Marshal McLuhan’s maxim “The medium is the message” asserts that technology, not its content, transforms us. The printed word transformed a spoken and external language into a silent and internal one. The Gutenberg Galaxy, 1962 delineates the “electronic age” from the “typographic age” that was one-sensed and visual. McLuhan attributes this “single point of view” to geometrical optics, perspective and print. He claims the electronic age will resynthesise the senses, and asks: “What will be the new

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configurations of mechanisms and of literacy as these older forms of perception and judgement are interpenetrated by the new electric age?” Fishenden’s article Battle of the Processes, 1951 asserts that collotype, photogravure, typographic and lithographic printing each strove to be the dominant technique. Each technique was equally unsuccessful in the pursuing exactly repeatable colour verisimilitude. A corporation (Eastman Kodak), not printers, solved the problem – coincidentally, at the same time as the new medium of the computer and scanners were coming to existence. Colour has physical, biological, and psychological descriptions; the phenomenon was termed “psychophysics” after the title of Gustav Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysik, 1860.22 Kipphan describes a physical solution proofing used for most of the twentieth century:

During the development of analog proofing processes (e.g. Chromalin and Matchprint…), colorants for powder toner or overlay colour film materials with primary-colour locations that correspond to those of the standardized process inks under a given type of standard illumination were sought. In addition, these colorants should also have the same reproduction characteristics (dot gain, etc.) as conventional ink. In the absence of suitable colorants (e.g., pigments), in the end only substitute colorants which were as similar as possible were found. Therefore, strictly speaking these materials also do not meet the requirements on an identical reproduction characteristic, though these interim solutions are to a great extent accepted in practice.23

For a little over a hundred years, printers manipulated their media for the best colour reproduction and matches using the “physics” part of psychophysics. However:

In more recent digital proofing systems based on non-impact printing technologies, it was no longer even attempted to adjust the colorimetrical reproduction properties to the printing processes to be simulated via the selection or particularly suitable colorants. Multidimensional colour transformations are used for equipment adjustment here, with the aid of colour management systems and colorimetric measurement technique.24

These “multidimensional colour transformations” are measurements of human colour perception or the psychology part of psychophysics. Codification and mechanisation is usurping the craft of media manipulation. Computers are taking on the human characteristic of colour perception through a code; Bruno Latour identifies this as the creation of a hybrid, a blending of machine and human. What is modernity? If Latour is correct, “We Have Never Been Modern.”25 He says:

Modernity is often defined in terms of humanism, either way as a way of saluting the birth of ‘man’ or as a way of announcing his death. But this habit itself is modern, because it remains asymmetrical. It overlooks the simultaneous birth of ‘nonhumanity’ – things or objects, or beasts – and the equally strange beginning of the crossed out God, relegated to the sidelines.26

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In Pandora’s Hope, 1999 Latour asks: “Do you believe in reality?” Everyday experience would suggest yes. However, he argues that science facts are “socially constructed” rather than an “objective truth”. This social science method is called Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and was developed by Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law in the 1980s. ANT aims to treat the object and subject symmetrically, as users beliefs are equally as important as the technologies actions or a theory’s objective. ANT strives to eliminate Descartes’s “God-trick” of reductive simplicity, and to embrace complexity. ANT aims to reveal all the “actors” that create a [colour] technology, including people, stuff, theories, histories and innovations. ANT desires to fill the space between modernity’s objective subjective split. Latour argues that the “Science Wars,” between the subjective postmodernists and science’s objectivists opened a Pandora’s box revealing a collective of humans and nonhumans. We are like a Daedalus who is negotiating a labyrinth of technique. Kodak provided an aid to the negotiation of the labyrinth of technologies when it proposed: “You press the button, we do the rest.” So our colour technologies are in fact collection of “subprograms” (skills), “congealed labour,” and “absent engineers”, it is a “body corporate” and an “object-institution”. Graphic artists no longer colour as Itten and Albers taught us, instead we colour by negotiating the labyrinth of science (Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage), technology (International Color Consortium), and society (International Organization for Standardization).27

Latour’s “Third Source of Uncertainty” from Reassembling the Social, 2005 asserts that who and what should be defined as part of a sociological exploration. Workshop, design department, or scientific laboratory innovations should be examined to restore their histories, making objects visible. Users are ignorant of their objects, these objects only become apparent when they fail to perform. His “Fourth Source of Uncertainty” argues that the seventeenth-century invention of society and nature is not reality. Scientific facts are fabricated, they exist outside of laboratories, are influences on society, and describe themselves through controversies. Latour’s Science in Action, 1987 provides a program for the study of “scientific facts and technical artefacts”. It appropriated the term “blackbox” from cybernetics; blackboxing is a symbolic representation, a set of commands, accepted theories, and processes too complex to analyse. Early cameras were complex assemblages of lenses, diaphragms, silver salts, glass plates, light and photographers who had an intimate connection with their technique; Latour’s 1987 Kodak Automatic is a blackbox acting “as one device”, constructed of a “commercial network” (Figure 4). Technoscience or the social study of science explores the history of

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inventions along the networks that make action at distance possible. Latour’s program is to visualise that network.28

Are you “absolutely disconnected”? Can you “find absolute proof that you are connected”? This is Latour’s reply to Descartes’s question regarding the reality of perception. David C Lindberg’s Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler, 1976 tracks the history of optics to the point where Johannes Kepler’s analogy of the eye and camera obscura led to his theory of an inverted retinal image. Descartes used Kepler’s camera obscura analogy for a theory of mind, which resulted in the separation of subject and object (Figure 1). Euclid’s geometrical optics established a scientific tradition of the mathematising phenomenon, a tradition that Newton embraced whole heartedly. JAC Yule’s two explanations of optical halftone demonstrate the distinction between physical and mathematical optics; both explanations are valid (Figure 5). The Penumbra Theory, 1941 is geometrical, it describes the path of light as lines; however, The Diffraction Theory-Calculation, 1943 describes dot formation through the interference of the interacting cones of light. Two philosophers are still arguing the idealist versus realist toss, each corroborating their stance through colour science. CL Hardin’s Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow, 1988 presents the subjectivist argument and physicalism is presented by David R Hilbert’s Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism, 1987.29

The nineteenth-century actor–actant feedback loop of literacy, social criticism, wood pulp manufacture, stereotyping, iron presses, the lever press, steam power, publication of printing processes, and the like, simultaneously enlarged the book publishing output and the market for these books. This expansion reached critical mass; publishing became corporatised and unionised, knowledge distribution expanded broadly, science became professionalised, resulting in the “invention of the method invention”. One of the outcomes of the technology revolution and the knowledge industry was the successful mathematisation of colour perception. In the early twentieth century fixation of colour perception was successfully achieved through standardised measurement. By century’s end repeatable colour verisimilitude was achieved as a Latourian hybrid of vision, physics, biology, philosophy, machines, measurement, printing, photography, computers, codes, monitors and society. Latour leads the cry for the emancipation of the hybrids — for to know our machines is to know ourselves.30

In 1965, the colour scientist William David Wright sought a resolution to the subjective and objective delineation to colour:

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We have in the subject of colour a quite specific example of two cultures, in which artist and scientist speak a different language the other does not understand. We have a responsibility to put an end to the dichotomy, and if, as I now believe, the scientist’s concept is incomplete, then it is high time we developed a more adequate philosophy of colour to which both artist and scientist can subscribe.31

“Do we need a philosophy of colour?” asked Wright.32 A reasonable question in 1965 when colour in the graphic arts was still craft-like, colour science was only beginning to impact on the profession and abstraction was heralding the end of painting. As a user of colour technologies I feel they too arrived like manna from heaven, and graphic artists have unquestioning faith in them. This thesis aims to explore the cultural and technological changes that transformed graphic artists into technological realists (technorealists). It endeavours to undertake Latour’s demand to record technological histories that led to the transformation of graphic artists from craftsmen and creators of colour technology into its consumers and believers. Do graphic artists need a philosophy of colour technology? I believe that they do and the first step in that endeavour is to reveal that our colour technologies are in fact a collective of humans and nonhumans. ANT or the philosophy of technology of Latour is used here to emphasise that our technologies are socially constructed and by revealing their histories our colour technologies blackboxed and invisible natures will be revealed.

To reveal the true nature of our colour technologies the following chapter examines past and present approaches to the philosophy and histories of colour and technology with the purpose to define the concept of repeatable colour verisimilitude. Chapter 3 describes the parallel histories of the theory of colour and colour printing exploring the distinction between design and colour. Chapter 4 traces the actors within the science of colour and vision from Thomas Young through to recent time. Chapter 5 describes the way photography created the groundwork that leads to the blackboxing of colour technique. Chapter 6 tracks the twentieth century transition of colour printing as a craft through to the corporatisation of image reproduction. The concluding Chapter 7 reveals the ultimate colour blackbox that the mathematisation of technique enabled.

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Introduction referen ces

1 R Descartes and San Diego University of California, Camera Obscura Reference: Analysis of the Eye, La Dioptrique., 1637, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gqfFh5e SI%3D. 2 Plato and Benjamin Jowett, Timaeus, 18/1/2008 360BCE & 2004, html text, Project Gutenberg; NetLibrary, Available: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/plato/p71ti/p71ti.zip. 3 DL Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre (2 Bde. Tübingen, 1810). T Young and P Kelland, A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts, A new ed. (London: Printed for Taylor and Walton, 1845). 4 J Albers and San Diego University of California, Interaction of Color: Color Triangles (Goethe Triangle) Pl. Xxiv-1, 1963, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3giclx6f SA%3D 5 AB Klein, “The Munsell Colour System and the Need for the Standardisation of Colours,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1927) 57. 6 WHF Talbot and San Diego University of California, Top: Three of the Very Small Cameras Used by Talbot 1835-39. Bottom: Three of Talbot’s Larger Cameras, 1830s, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gpelx7f Cg%3D. Kodak Vr35, 2011, Available: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Kodak_VR352011. 7 JAC Yule, “Theory of the Halftone Process I. The Penumbra Theory,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 231.1 (1941). JAC Yule, “Theory of the Halftone Process. II. The Diffraction Theory-Calculation of the Light Distribution,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 235.5 (1943). 8 RG Kuehni and A Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) 100-01, 357. E Hering, Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1920, 1964). 9 H Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables (Berlin; London: Springer, 2001) 31. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1956,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956) 8. P Kohn, “Colour: Do You Measure Up?,” ProPrint July 2009: 42-45. I Newton, Opticks, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light Microform, 4 ed. (London: Prometheus Books, 1730). 10 GG Field, Color Essentials: Color and Quality for the Graphic Arts and Sciences, Volume 3, 1st ed., vol. 3, 3 vols. (Pittsburgh: Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, 2009) 1-14. SH Steinberg and John Trevitt, Five Hundred Years of Printing, New ed. (London New Castle, DE: British Library; Oak Knoll Press, 1996) 7-9. B Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999). M McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). 11 Eastman Kodak Company, The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction (Rochester: Eastman Kodak, Company, 1937). 12 J Moran, R Austin, MH Bruno and A Hutt, “The Penrose Survey,” The Penrose Annual. The International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. Herbert Spencer, vol. 69 (London: Lund Humphries, 1968) 22.

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Introduction references

13 RM Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing in association with Adam Hilger, 1910 & 1983). 14 EJ Wall, The History of Three-Color Photography (Boston, Massachusetts: American Photographic Publishing Company, 1925). JS Friedman, History of Color Photography (Boston: The American Photographic Publishing Company, 1944). MR Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science, 4th Edition ed. (Amsterdam; London: Focal, 2007). John Hannavy, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography (New York; London: Routledge, 2008). 15 LW Sipley, A Half Century of Color (New York: Macmillan, 1951). GC Pratt, “The Sipley/3M Collection,” Image: Journal of Photography and Motion Pictures of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House September 1978. 16 RWG Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour, Wiley-IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology, 6th ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004) 540. GG Field, Color Essentials: Color and Quality for the Graphic Arts and Sciences, Volume 2, 1st ed., vol. 2, 3 vols. (Pittsburgh: Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, 2009). GG Field, Color Essentials: Color and Quality for the Graphic Arts and Sciences, Volume 1, 1st ed., vol. 1, 3 vols. (Pittsburgh: Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, 2009). GG Field, Color Essentials: Color and Quality for the Graphic Arts and Sciences, Volume 3. GG Field, Color and Its Reproduction, 3rd ed. (Pittsburgh, PA: Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, 2004). Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables VII. 17 J Itten, The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color (New York: Reinhold Pub. Corp., 1961). FA Horowitz and B Danilowitz. J Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale (London: Phaidon, 2006) 19-20. A Schopenhauer, G Stahl and PO Runge, On Vision and Colors Color Sphere, 1st ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre. ME Chevreul and F Birren, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the Arts, A newly revised edition. (West Chester, Pennsylvania: Schiffer, 1864 & 1987). Hering, Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense. W Ostwald and F Birren, The Color Primer; a Basic Treatise on the Color System of Wilhelm Ostwald (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969). F Birren, Principles of Color; a Review of Past Traditions and Modern Theories of Color Harmony (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969). AH Munsell, A Color Notation: An Illustrated System Defining All Colors and Their Relations by Measured Scales of Hue, Value, and Chroma, 11th ed. (Baltimore: Munsell Color Company, 1913 & 1961). 18 Klein, “The Munsell Colour System and the Need for the Standardisation of Colours,” 58. 19 ON Rood and F Birren, Modern Chromatics; Students’ Text-Book of Color, with Applications to Art and Industry (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1879 & 1973). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present. 115 RG Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present (Hoboken, NJ: J Wiley, 2003). AH Munsell and AEO Munsell, A Color Notation, 9th ed. (Baltimore, Maryland: Munsell Color Company, 1941). 15-16

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Introduction references

20 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present. J Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993). J Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999). 21 PD Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1981) xi-xii, 221. S Johnston, A History of Light and Colour Measurement: Science in the Shadows (Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2001) 237-43, 50. 22 Steinberg and Trevitt, Five Hundred Years of Printing. OM Lilien and JC Le Blon, Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1667-1741: Inventor of Three- and Four Colour Printing, Bibliothek des Buchwesens, Bd. 9 (Stuttgart: A Hiersemann, 1985). WM Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press; MIT Press, 1969). EL Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979) 71-126, 704, 507. G Sarton, Six Wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance, The Patten Lectures, 1955 (Bloomington,: Indiana University Press, 1957) 3. MG Durham and D Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, (Malden, Massachusetts; Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 129-38. McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man 1-9, 276-78. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Review, 1951,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1951). Gustav Theodor Fechner, Elemente Der Psychophysik (Leipzig,: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1860). 23 Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables 86-87. 24 Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables 87. 25 B Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993). 26 Latour, We Have Never Been Modern 13. 27 Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies 1, 4-8, 174-215, 193, 299- 300. PJ. Westwick, Science Wars, 2003, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t124.e0666. I Buchanan, Actor-Network-Theory, 2010, Oxford University Press Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t306.e9. J Law and J Hassard, Actor Network Theory and After, Sociological Review Monograph Series (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999) 10-11. B Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005) 77. B Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993) 46 28 B Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987) 2-3, 72, 80-83, 118-19, 30-31, 254.

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Introduction references

29 Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies 12. Yule, “Theory of the Halftone Process I. The Penumbra Theory.” Yule, “Theory of the Halftone Process. II. The Diffraction Theory-Calculation of the Light Distribution.” CL Hardin, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988). DR Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism, CSLI Lecture Notes (Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1987). 30 ANorth Whitehead, Science and the Modern World. Lowell Lectures, 1925 (New York: The Macmillan company, 1925). Steinberg and Trevitt, Five Hundred Years of Printing. Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory 142. 31 WD Wright, The Rays Are Not Coloured: Essays on the Science and Vision and Colour (London: Hilger, 1967). 32 Wright, The Rays Are Not Coloured: Essays on the Science and Vision and Colour.

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Figure 1: Athanasius Kircher: Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (Great Art of Light and Shade); Romani Collegii Societatus Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum (Magic Lantern Projecting a Soul in Purgatory), 1678.1

2. Repeatable Colour Verisimilitude

It was the radical error of Greek philosophy to imagine that the same method which proved so eminently successful in mathematical, would be equally so in physical enquiries, and that, setting out from a few simple and almost self-evident notions, or axioms, everything else could be reasoned out. – John Frederick William Herschel, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1830.2

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Introduction

Figure 2: James Cameron: The Terminator’s user interface. Special effects coordinator, graphic animation effects and main title design: Ernest D Farino, 1984.3

This chapter provides the historical background for the concept repeatable colour verisimilitude. It will elucidate how repeatability caused both the fixation of knowledge and Western society’s obsession for verisimilitude, and outlines how external objects became delineated from the perceiving subjects: us. It is necessary to revisit this hoary old topic because optics and print are again instigating cultural change. Which leaves us to ask once more: do we need a philosophy of colour technology? Yes: technological advance has thrown the realism of colour into doubt.

James Cameron’s The Terminator, 1984 visualises this object–subject dilemma (Figure 2). Represented is the Terminator’s user interface (UI); a point of view that implies a third person observing the screen as either a computer processing unit, an ego, or a soul. This is a question as old as philosophy; is there a soul, body, and environment division? How did Skynet know how to represent red? Even humans have not reconciled whether the mental experience of the red representation is an identical one for all individuals. The screen has a linear tonal scale from black to red to white, which is a concept from Aristotle. Skynet would know that red representations require two photoreceptors; this would be a waste of processing power for an image that is no better than a grey scale. Dual receptors could represent red, yellow and green. We can see that cyborg and human vision have no equivalence, proving that one-to-one relationships between observers and

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the observed cannot exist. It was by discarding this one-to-one conception that Thomas Young (1773-1829) explained colour vision through his wave theory of light. He wrote:

As it is almost impossible to conceive each sensitive point of the retina to contain an infinite number of particles, each capable of vibrating in perfect unison with every possible undulation, it becomes necessary to suppose the number limited, for instance to the three principal colours, red, yellow, and blue…4

Arguably, Young’s trichromatic theory marks the beginning of the modern era of colour because it led to the demise of colour philosophy, and established the colour science and reproduction professions. Young’s achievement required Johannes Kepler’s (1571-1630) theory of the retinal image, Isaac Newton’s (1643-1727) observations of the spectrum; and it instigated, through James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), the science of colour measurement.

David C Lindberg remarks in Theories of Vision that the study of “optical phenomena” is as old as writing. From the ancient Greeks onward there were two approaches to optics: extramission, that has a medium travelling from the eye; and intromission with a medium travelling to the eye. These old philosophical divisions may be old but they are not relegated to the dustbin of history. In 1988 CL Hardin, a new extramissionalist, revived the philosophy of colour tradition in his Color for Philosophers. He claimed that science had solved colour’s mystery. David R Hilbert, a new intromissionalist and Hardin’s philosophical nemesis, provides definitions for the three approaches to colour: physicalism, that asserts veridicality between objects and vision; eliminativism, where colour is strictly a quality of vision; dispositionalism, where objects are disposed to cause colour sensations.5 It is dispositionalism’s application to colour science and its reproduction that is of interest here.

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Extramission

Figure 3: Leonardo da Vinci: Visual emanation from a round object after Al-Kindi.6

Empedocles (c493-c433BCE) established the one-to-one concept by arguing that “like perceives like” and that, to make vision possible Aphrodite enclosed a primeval fire element within the water element to create eyes. Vision projects like a lamp interacting with the external fire. A Pythagorean, he equated the four primary colours white, black, red, and õchron with the four elements.7 Plato (c429-c347BCE) sustained the one-to-one belief in Timeaus 360BCE, stating:

When the light of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object.8

In sleep the fire is internalised, becoming dreams; later this internal fire is to become a symbol of Christianity’s “spirit”. Plato’s jumbled analysis of colour, though regarded by John Gage as meagre, provides an intuitive description of the psychology and physics of colour. For Plato the velocity of atoms caused colour; a view not unlike that of Kurt Nassau, who in The Physics and Chemistry of Colour: The Fifteen Causes of

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Colour, 1983 locates the visual spectrum within the “electrostatic nature of matter” in the small region where light modifies matter, but does not destroy it. There is a causal chain between objects modifying photons, reflection, and the reaction of the retina’s rhodopsin that light in turn reacts with. Plato’s “line of vision” foreshadows the geometrical optics of Euclid (c300BCE). In Optica, 300BCE Euclid excluded all physical or psychological concepts to explain perspective; he is notable for fusing the visual rays with geometry and mathematics. Ptolemy (90-168) elaborated on Plato and Euclid by assigning energy to the visual ray. Like Empedocles he claimed that the visual cone emanated from the cornea, and that external objects generated colour responses through alteration of this energy. He explored optical mixing by spinning parti-coloured wheels and subjective visual phenomena such as simultaneous contrast and spread, aerial perspective and after-images. The anatomist Galen (129-99) opposed the “walking-stick” analogies of knowledge where the external pushed along the emanating pneuma (soul). Noting that vision required illumination, he contended that the soul emanated from the optic nerve and interacted with the medium of air. He classified four basic colours: black, white, red and green. Observing that cataracts blocked vision, he like Euclid attributed the crystalline humour (lens) with visual power, thus alleviating the need to explain image inversion by the eye’s lens. His authority among Islamic and Christian scholars led to the fixation of this proposition until the dawn of the Enlightenment. Only after the invention of printing were his observations scrutinised.9

Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (803-73) conjectured that all objects in the universe radiated rays with force like stars (Figure 3). If vision occurred because of object radiation, he conjectured that its physical nature was perceivable. He felt that the rays would cause spotty vision, arguing that the visual cone “…must be conceived as a continuous body of radiation”. Interestingly, we now know our cones and rods are interpolated to a continuous image. Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Albadi (980-1037) popularised Galen, presenting new theories and observations that expanded the descriptions of the human eye. He reasoned that the crossing of the optic nerve in the chiasm caused the perception of single images. He was edging closer to the notion of a retinal image; he fused intromission with extramission, claiming that the soul met with a medium just outside the optic nerve. Neither Galen nor Hunayn provided explanations for the actions between the crystalline humor and optic nerve; “…they regarded the post-crystalline transmission as neurophysiological,” says Lindberg.10

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In our world of photons and quantum mechanics accounts of an absurd theory like extramission seems valueless. However, extramission demonstrates an innate awareness of the inextricable human participation in the world of colour. To these scholars the soul projected into the world; today we call this projection psychology or subjectivity. Twentieth-century Hardin, a phenomenologist, studies the end of causal chains: object lens > retina > optic nerve > LGN > visual cortex> representation, where science gives >no explanation. He feels that like the grammar of language, colour grammar provides a means for its analysis. Extramission’s medium travelled out; for Hardin light travels in, its interaction with the retina is processed, then the mind projects out onto the world. This suggests that colour classifications are a priori judgments.11 This harks back to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) who wrote: “…it must be quite intolerable to hear the representation of the colour red called an idea.”12 Hardin appreciates the subjective– objective dilemma:

Endeavouring to find a home for colours among objects that appear to bear them, some materialists hold that colours are constituents of the physical world, quite independent of human or other sentient beings. These are the objectivists. Others hold that although colours are indeed features of material objects, they are so only as dispositions of those objects to affect organisms in an appropriate sensory fashion under the proper circumstances. These are the subjectivists.13

Hardin’s colour grammar is reminiscent of Plato and includes contrast effects, dreams, and after-images. Important to him is Leo Hurvich (1911-2009) and Dorothea Jameson (1920-1998) for their proof that Ewald Hering’s (1834-1918) red/green, yellow/blue, and black/white opponency was a higher-level process occurring after the Young–Helmholtz trichromatic process of the retina. Herman von Helmholtz (1821-1894) dismissed opponency with the description “unconscious inference”. Hardin’s subjectivist stance makes colour a human attribute on the basis that red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white are unique hues determined by vision. The visual cortex cannot perceive reddish- green, yellowish-blue, or blackish-white non-unique colours as mixtures. Objects may be reddish-yellow, yellowish-red but when the mind makes the leap to orange it percieves orange. All colours are contained within “geometry of colour” determined by brightness, hue and saturation. Hardin states that there are no novel hues; objects may reflect red and green light, but we cannot perceive them simultaneously; however, Vincent A Billock and Brian H Tsou in Scientific American of 2010 claimed to “…have seen these unimaginable, or ‘forbidden’, colours”. Colour opponency is for Hardin “…a fundamental feature of the visual system which is reflected quite generally in colour-

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classifying behaviour and linguistic practices.” Hue has correlation to wavelength; monochromatic light or wavelength mixtures can stimulate unique green; and grey can be elicited from stimulations of unique green and yellowish-red. Hue cannot be an object property; for instance, blue has many causes: differential scattering (sky), dispersion (rainbows), diffraction (beetles), interference (bird wings), and transference of electrons (sapphires). Nothing “beyond our skins” is “causally connected with our colour experiences ”, he says: “We may call that doctrine subjectivism. Subjectivism is at least as old as the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and has more often been given a dualist rather than a physicalist formulation.”14

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Intromission

Figure 4: Athanasus Kircher: Large Portable Camera Obscura, Engraving, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbra (Great Art of Light and Shade), 1646.15

Observing reflections on the cornea, the anatomist Democritus (c460-c370BCE) accordingly classified it as the seat of vision. He was an extreme eliminitivist; objects, being atoms and void, had no reality; they were by convention sweet, bitter, cold, or coloured, of the latter he classified four: white, black, red, and green—like Galen’s the latter are tantalisingly analogous to opponent colours. Epicurus (341-270BCE) defined intromission: “For particles are continually streaming from the surface of bodies …it is by the entrance of something coming from external objects that we see their shape and think of them.” Aristotle (384-322BCE) spurned intromission’s corpuscular as well as extramission’s fire proposals, asking of the latter how: “…does the ray of vision reach the stars?” Colour was an object quality instantaneously moving along an invisible medium in a “homogeneous chain” and actualised by the eye; he said, “…colour is just this ‘something’ we are plainly taught by facts…” In De Sensu Et Sensibilibus, 350BCE he specified seven species of object colours arranged tonally from black to white; this approach “…passed down to posterity a set of assumptions about colour which were modified only slowly and which gave far more prominence to the value of light and shade that they gave to hue,” notes Gage. Conversely in Meteorologica, 350BCE Aristotle expounded additive colour theory, noting that red, green, and violet are the colours of rainbows and could not be mixed by painters. Two millennia later it cannot be coincidence that these are the colours of the trichromatic separation filters; as Gamble

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identified in Photographic Processes of Today, 1895: “These are based on the now generally accepted theory that red, green, and violet, when combined, reproduce all the colours of nature.”16

The Islamic scholars preserved intromission and extramission; the most influential of these was the Aristotelian and intromissionalist Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdallah ibn Sina (980-1037) who reasoned that eyes were too small to generate such large rays, which would lose contact with the eye; pencil-like vision would be spotty, and Galen’s air as medium should provide equal vision for all. Advocating a transparent medium he brilliantly explained perspective by inverting Euclid’s geometry: “…when light falls on the visible object, it projects the image of the object onto the eye…”. He pre-empted Otto Runge’s (1777-1810) colour sphere, saying “…within each hue there were a species of colour differing in their lightness and darkness and that there was even a ‘pure’ (i.e. achromatic) sequence from white to black through grey.”17

Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965-1035 CE) recognised a correspondence between pain and vision. He attributed the perception of colour, after- images, luminous and illuminated bodies to a force; remarking that an emanating substance that could travel to stars would destroy the eye on its return. He integrated anatomy, physics, mathematics, Euclid’s geometry, Ptolemy’s energy, and al-Kindi’s radiation to explain perception through space. For him, objects are a subject of “punctiform analysis”: “…from each point of every coloured body, illuminated by any light, issue light and colour along every straight line that can be drawn for that point.” Although he understood the workings of the camera obscura he still attributed the cornea with visual power. To deal with problem of multiple rays causing visual confusion, he unhappily suggested that rays perpendicular to the cornea were responsible for sight. His treatise on optics influenced Kepler’s theory of retinal vision.18

Robert Grosseteste (c1175-1253), Roger Bacon (c1214-1294), John Peckham (c1240- 1292), and Witelo (c1230-c1278) were beneficiaries of recovered optical texts. Witelo and Peckham were school and university standards well into the seventeenth century. Bacon expanded Aristotle’s tonal scale to twenty colours, with primaries of white, yellow, red, blue, green, and black; Gage feels that: “Bacon was on the threshold of a colour system.”19 The scene is set for Kepler, as Linberg explains:

… in the Baconian synthesis we find many of the principles in which Kepler would later build his theory of the retinal image – the punctiform analysis of the visible object, the requirement of a one-to-one correspondence between points in the visual field and points in the eye, a stress on mathematical

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analysis, and a relatively advanced understanding of the propagation of light and its refraction in transparent substances.20

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) observed that the solar eclipse of the moon projected through a camera obscura appeared smaller than a normal projection of the sun. In the seventeenth century the camera obscura became a toy for “mystification and delight”; it was a tool for artists, scientists, and travellers; a craze, it was often disguised in books and goblets. In time lenses were added, diaphragms for image sharpening and reflex mirrors, mobile versions were used for topographical drawing (Figure 4); however, it stagnated technologically until William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851) created photography.21 Brahe’s assistant, Kepler, found no solution to the moon problem in Witelo and Peckham. Using string through a pinhole he explained that the projected size was determined by aperture size and distance of the plane of focus.22 Taking into account Felix Platter’s (1536-1614) observation of no connection between the cornea and the optic nerve, Kepler reasoned that the eye operates like a camera obscura. This invalidated al-Haytham’s rectilinear rays, implying that the retina must have an inverted image projected upon it. An inverted image implied interpretation by a soul or a mind; vision is subjective without a one-to-one relationship with objects. Kepler noted: “…vision occurs in the spirits and through this impression of species on the spirit. However, this impression is not optical but physical and mysterious.”23 The history of colour reproduction and physiological optics are defined as modern from this moment, Lindberg comments:

It is perhaps significant that Kepler employed the term pictura in discussing the inverted retinal image for this is the first genuine instance in the history of visual theory of a real optical image within the eye—a picture, having existence independent of the observer, formed by the focusing of all available rays on a surface.24

Twentieth-century Hilbert’s anthropological realist interpretation of vision argues that minds require only that knowledge of the external which “can be realistically be expected.” He says, “…the way the world appears to us is the joint product of the way the world is and the way we are.” Vision limits data collection; for instance, a plaid shirt at a distance provides less information than one nearby, and atoms are too small to be seen, so are colourless. Colour is not a microphysical property but an attribute of an object to reflect light and of vision to discern reflectance. He recognises that object colours do not exist for colour science, which abstracts from “perceptual perspectives” of humans. Distinguishing between materiality and science, he says, “A property can be objective and still have no important role to play in the scientific explanation of any material

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phenomenon.” He is not a wavelength realist, agreeing with Newton’s maxim that rays are not coloured. He adopts the concept of “surface spectral reflectance” (SSR) which argues that an object’s surface reflection could be modelled with a “small number of parameters … specifying, at each wavelength in the visible spectrum, the percentage of light the object reflects at that wavelength.” Hilbert claims a machine using SSR could “…classify objects by reflectance in way that is similar to that of human perception”.25 Hilbert’s approach is an Aristotelian propagation of species through a causal chain of illuminant, object, wavelength, and comprehension by vision. A materialist, he believes dispositionalism is futile – metameric colour matches imply all perception is illusory – making vision’s ability to source truthful information from the environment impossible.26 Metamers occur infrequently in nature but are the principle behind photography, printing and colour measurement. Hilbert’s aim is to remove “philosophy of mind” from the “philosophy of colour”; he says, “Sensation cannot literally be said to be coloured just as in the subjectivist view objects cannot be said to be coloured.”27

Since colours are perceived to be on the surfaces of objects it is the light reaching the eye from that surface in question that must be correlated with the perceived colour of that surface. We have reached our conclusion: the perceived colour of a surface is correlated with some property of the light reaching the eye from that surface. I will call the conclusion the local light assumption.28

Hilbert’s argument is a folly. The retina contains rhodopsin (visual purple) with a carbon bond that is reactive to photons; a causal chain will have complexity beyond description for it requires a: “…new type of mathematics that no longer describes the real world in terms of particles and waves; it is only the observed world that can be described in those terms”, as Stephen Hawking (b1942) explains of quantum mechanics.29

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Modernity

Figure 5: René Descartes, La Dioptrique Camera Obscura Reference, Analysis of the eye, 1637.30

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Figure 6: Left: The Milwaukee Journal, 1950. Kodachrome transparencies reproduced with three-colour process plates. (No black plate used for illustrations). Right: VIVE magazine, 2000. Ektachrome transparencies reproduced four-colour process. Offset lithography by Offset Alpine, photography by Greg Barrett, art direction by John Henry Martin.31

Figure 7: From Urlich Boner’s book of German fables Der Edelstein, 1461.32

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Figure 8: Marcantonio Raimondi: The Climbers, 1519.33

Figure 9: Flaxman: Deliver us from Evil, relief engraved by Thomas Bolton using a photo emulsion upon woodblock as base art, c1861.34

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Figure 10: Domenico Fontana: Rome (Vatican): Egyptian Obelisk: Etching from Della Trasportatione dell’Obelisco Vaticano, 1590.35

Figure 11: Robert Boyle: first air pump. Diagram showing the first air pump used for experiments with the vacuum, 1660.36

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Figure 12: Joseph Fraunhofer: Solar spectrum divided by Fraunhofer lines (absorption lines), 1820.37

Figure 13: Helmholtz’s Physiological Optics from UNSW library. Date stamps from the 1980s – before digital records – nearly 120 years after it was published in 1867. Scanned 2009.38

If your career as a graphic artist began in the twentieth century you would have earned your stripes bent over a copy camera in a room dimly lit with a red safety lamp, unaware that the copy camera was a camera obscura and a machine that instigated modern philosophy and science. “Je pense donc je suis” (I think, therefore I am), famously wrote René Descartes in Discourse on Method, 1637. In the same publication his example of

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Method was his Optics that repeated Kepler’s camera obscura analogy (Figure 5). Ihde claims this analogy is an epistemology engine for Descartes’s theory of human knowledge. Inside the camera, the origin of the images is unknowable; by analogy, the origin of knowledge inside minds is unknowable. The mind need know nothing of external objects but to know truth Descartes created a philosophical God inside and outside the mind.39 Ihde explains:

Descartes made vision the model for much knowledge, but, in contrast to much ancient thought about vision as an active process, made vision ‘receptive’. Here, not unlike his English empiricist friends, vision occurs by means of ‘stimuli’ upon the bodily machine, the retina, which is the back wall of the camera obscura.40

His English empiricist friend John Locke (1632-1704) maintains this analogy:

For, methinks, the underftanding is not much unlike a clofet, wholly fhut from light, with only fome little opening left, to let in external vifible refemblances, or ideas of things without; would the pictures coming into fuch a dark room but ftay there, and lie fo orderly as to be found upon occafion, it would very much refemble the underftanding of a man, in reference to all objects of fight, and the ideas of them.41

Ihde refines this identity split to “body one” which is our motile, perceptual, and emotive being in the world; and “body two”, our culturally constructed body. Imagination can be embodied “in-here”, or disembodied “out-there”. Technology creates “instrumentally constructed or mediated” vision “out-there” to the macrocosm and microcosm, in contrast to whole body experiences that occur in complex environments such as fieldwork. He asks whether virtual reality technologies will replace real life, his answer: “Only if theatre can replace actual life.” Our technological illusions have eliminated the Cartesian object and subject divide – for instance, eyeglasses modified scribes, lengthening their careers, and typewriters modified women, allowing them freer access to the commercial workplace. He says: “Insofar as I use or employ a technology, I am used by and employed by that technology as well.” Attending an imaging conference, he concludes that scientists “instrumental realists”, film and television theorists “social constructionists”, and computer modellers as ambiguous hybrids of both he felt experienced more reality. Graphic arts technology makes colour an “out-there” virtual experience and its users instrumental realists, as I say: technorealists.42

Technological mediation of knowledge is not a strictly a contemporary technoscience enquiry; Plato’s cave allegory questioned the value of realism and truth as opposed to social impact: when a prisoner discovers the three-dimensional character of the forms projecting shadows he recommends, “…if anyone tried to loose another and lead him up

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to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.” In John R Searle’s Chinese Room analogy he uses a codebook to translate Chinese questions posed to him into English replies, the codebook is the technological mediator, allowing him to appear to speak Chinese.43 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) throws doubt on ever perceiving our technologies:

And, supposing that there were a machine so constructed as to cause thought, feeling and perception, we could conceive of it as enlarged and yet preserving the same proportions, so that we might enter it like a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception.44

There is another epistemology engine of concern to a graphic artist and modernity: movable type. Mechanised writing inspired a paradigm shift of mechanised crafts, and a society focused on commodity production. Historical focus on knowledge creation through typography has overlooked image reproduction, and by consequence colour. McLuhan defined four human ages: oral/aural, writing, typographic, and electronic: he said, “A few decades hence it will be easy to describe the revolution in human perception and motivation that resulted from beholding the new mosaic mesh of the TV image. Today it is futile to discuss it at all.” The Gutenberg Galaxy recommended an analysis of our age in a few decades from 1962; however, McLuhan’s romantic view of the Elizabethans shows his understanding that a technological shift requires a century to become discernible. At his 1980 death, audio-visual technologies were in swaddling clothes, colour printing operated like a craft, and the Internet was a gleam in the eye of the US military. The incunabula of the digital age will not display its effects till 2050, one hundred years after the commercialisation of television.45

McLuhan’s thesis is that silent book reading, perspective, and verisimilitude in art led to a visual–auditory split, destroying our innate synaesthesia. Audio-visual technology, he predicted, would return us to the medieval by re-synthesising whole of body experiences. McLuhan’s “electronic age” was reasonable in appellation 1962; he nevertheless confuses the medium with the message. To describe our age as an electronic one is equivalent to describing the “typographic age” as an age of metal, paper and ink. It is the transformation of knowledge between syntaxes that reveals an age; the typographic age fixed knowledge for the future; our age transforms knowledge and phenomena to code for transmission. Ours is the Coding Age. McLuhan explains the link between reading and single point perspective:

As the literal or ‘the letter’ later became identified with the light on rather than light through the text, there was also the equivalent stress on ‘point of

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view’ or the fixed position of the reader: ‘from where I am sitting.’ Such a visual stress was quite impossible before print stepped up the visual intensity of the written page to the point of entire uniformity and repeatability.46

Elizabeth Eisenstein draws attention to the impossibility of perceiving the effects of technological change while living it: “…handwork and presswork continued to appear almost indistinguishable, even after the printer had begun to depart from scribal conventions and to exploit some of the new features inherent in the art.”47 Equally, today it would be difficult to discern the technological difference between a three-colour lithograph and a four-colour CTP web offset; or a between a hand composited three-colour carbon photograph and a Kodacolor print or a digitally generated inkjet. (Figure 6)

It was the medieval classical revival that advanced Western literacy, not movable type as believed; the scholastics were recovering texts from church repositories and Islam long before the invention of printing. Scribes supplied texts to this new literary community; Gutenberg recognised “…the need for, and potentialities of, large-scale production of literature”, says SH Steinberg.48 Print relieved scholars of the arduous task of copying text, freeing them for new research, comparison of data; and it revealed inconsistencies and corruptions. Printing is distinctive for fixing recovered knowledge and preventing its loss. Eisenstein remarks that print was an “accident of timing”, without which the “…Italian revival might well have resembled the so-called ‘proto-humanist’ movement of the twelfth-century.”49 Lindberg asked, “Did late-medieval Scholasticism have a suffocating effect on intellectual life, as the stereotype suggests?”50 Printed editions of Euclid, al-Haytham, Roger Bacon, Witelo, and Peckham transformed optics from a philosophy to a science. Newton, living in a Protestant England that was free from Catholic censorship, became a self-educated man thanks to print; nonetheless, Eisenstein notes that publishing fixed our notions of time and history:

Medieval scholars did not see the classical past from a fixed distance as we do now. They did not regard it as a container of objects to be placed in glass cases and investigated by specialists in diverse scholarly field… Given their celebration of a revival based on classical models and their passion for recovering, collecting and examining antique works, given also their more novel belief that a dark interval of barbarism separated them from antiquity, were they the harbingers of a new distinctively modern historical consciousness? 51

Additionally, fixation impacted on Christian liturgy. Printers were businessmen who desired returns on their investment; Bible publishing was the shortest path to profit. Voracious Bible publishing was viewed positively at first, leading Nicolas of Cusa to

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coin the phrase “the divine art”. Until that time scriptorium Bibles were evolving texts reflecting local traditions; wider book distribution through print made textual inconsistencies apparent, with Robert Estienne (1503-1559) responding by publishing a Vulgate Bible with notes indicating variations from other Bibles. Desiderius Erasmus (c1469-1536) published a Latin translation of The New Testament, 1516 hoping to eliminate text corruptions as St Jerome had achieved with the Vulgate. Scholars desired access to original Bible sources: Polyglot Bible publishing exploded, with texts in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, each claiming to be the most authoritative version; a battle that brings to mind of the format war between VHS and Beta. Regional dialects entered scripture because medieval Latin was a living language, unlike classical Latin. Protestant vernacular Bible publishing allowed laypersons to read Bibles and interpret the message for themselves; this is often blamed for the death of Latin. The real culprit was the Roman Church, which asserted that the Clementine Vulgate as the most authoritative version, this fixed classical Latin. It became the language of scholars, and the last nail in Latin’s coffin was the centralisation of church authority and the publishing of standardised pulpit oratory.52

The “book of nature” became standardised through the publication of manuals and textbooks. Young men like Newton educated themselves, ending the dependency on and mediation by scholastic professors whose knowledge was the received wisdom of the ancients; they interpreted nature for themselves. Modern science was created, previously impossible when diverse opinions were locked away in manuscripts in far-flung repositories. Church censorship was known as “the list” of banned books. “The list” of verified older texts or of new observations that did not conform to orthodoxy became a bibliography of original thought, and seeing a source of profit, northern printers rushed to print them. To avoid censorship, natural philosophers strove to eliminate opinion from their interpretations; nature’s basic elements of matter, motion, bulk, and shape could be trusted to be truthful. Movable type technology changed the state of the Western human from being within nature and with God to that of an observing subject, alone and isolated, with books as mediators of knowledge.53

For William M Ivins historians overvalue the effect of movable type; word containers have existed for 5000 years and a technology that represents “sounds and signs” could not have created modernity. Only images contain sufficient data to elicit the change to modernity. The “exactly repeatable pictorial statement”, asserts Ivins, “…has never been subjected to adequate analysis.” He feels that photography is the zenith of the repeatable

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image’s development, saying that it: “…has enabled men to discover that many things of the greatest interest and importance have been distorted, obscured, and even hidden, by verbal and pictorial, i.e. symbolic, syntaxes that were too habitual to be recognized.”54

Woodcuts appeared widely in the fifteenth-century (Figure 7), closely followed by engraving and etching, each evolving elaborate graphic syntaxes. Early prints lacked informational content; however, by the mid-sixteenth-century there was an upsurge of books on “…architecture, botany, machinery, anatomy, zoology, costumes, archaeology, numismatics, and specially some on the technologies and crafts”. The expertise of fine metal engravers improved to fulfil the market demand for verisimilitude. Until the invention of photography, Marcantonio Raimondi’s (c1476-c1530) engraving style was preferred for book illustration technique, leading to the demise of woodblock (Figure 8). His technique sublimated surface texture of sculptures and paintings to pure form. By the seventeenth century the marks were extremely intricate and idiosyncratic.55 Ivins comments:

The phrase that Professor Sainsbury used in describing what he called English Augustan prose style may be applied to it. It was a most adequate instrument for an average purpose. It was fitted for the average skill of the average engraver, for it enabled him to produce tidy organized linear webs that called for no mental alertness.56

Nineteenth-century engraving was a specialist profession no longer practised by painters, who preferred to create paintings for reproduction. Publishers were unable to respond to the appetite for books by the self-educated person of this age, as engraved plates had limited runs. Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) reinvented wood technique by engraving on the end grain of blocks, fulfilling the need for fine work on durable blocks.57 Thomas Bolton (1823-1906) initiated photo imaging by using a photosensitive emulsion on a woodblock and producing a photograph as base art (Figure 9). For Ivins: “…this neglected little print by Bolton must be regarded as in many ways the most important wood-engraving that had been made up to its time.” It defines modernity in print; it is the beginning of the twentieth-century endeavour to remove the syntax of handwork from image reproduction.58

Where Grosseteste had envisioned a unified theory of everything being based around optics; Francis Bacon (1561-1626) attributed the “mechanical discoveries” printing, gunpowder, and magnets with having changed the “whole face and state of things”. On printing he remarked that, “…men went for so many ages without this most beautiful discovery, which is of so much service in the propagation of knowledge.” Contemplating

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a demise of received ancient knowledge, he proposed induction as a method for knowledge acquisition which entailed cataloguing all known “natural and experimental histories”, followed by rejections and exclusions, to reach an affirmation. Sepper interprets induction: “…one could cautiously move first from particulars to a modest level of generality and then by stages to ever higher levels. Until finally one reached the most comprehensive generalisationof all.”59

When Bacon defined his four idols: the tribe, false perception; the cave, false understanding; the market place, false beliefs; and the theatre, false traditions, he made an allusion to the removal of an obelisk. It could not be moved even by athletes (logicians), only machines could move the obelisk. Machines are to be the assistants for the generation of new knowledge. This obelisk analogy is a pointer to the beginning of printing–knowledge feedback loops, for surely Bacon was inspired by Domenico Fontana’s manual describing the raising of the Egyptian obelisk in St Peter’s Square (Figure 10). Pope Sixtus V had commanded Fontana to raise the obelisk as a piece of Christian propaganda indicating the triumph of modern technology over the ancients.60 Printing had given Bacon the freedom to discredit the past, as Eisenstein notes:

Not humanism but printing gave the ‘great boost’ which led researchers to surpass the ancients and move toward new frontiers for the first time. The ‘significant impetus’ was provided by the new method of duplicating inherited technical literature which freed scholars from scribal labours and provided new means of achieving long sought goals.61

Robert Boyle’s (1627-1691) epistemology engine was “elaborate,” “expensive,” and “temperamental”; an air-pump, it was seventeenth-century “Big Science,” says Steven Shapin. Boyle’s pursuits were empirical, with observations conducted as a “collective enterprise” that provided authentic testimony of an event. He and Robert Hooke (1635-1703) codified the Royal Society’s “procedures for the standard recording of experiments” which required a register to be signed by the observers present. His aim was repeatability, as in Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, 1664 the purpose was “…to teach a young Gentleman to make them”. Becoming aware that his experiments were not replicated he conceded to a state of “virtual witnessing” which was achieved by publishing engravings of his experimental devices (Figure 11), creating a sense of authenticity testimony and undistorted witnessing. His written style was “plain, puritanical, unadorned (yet convoluted), identified as functional” and gave an “impression of verisimilitude”, says Shapin. Citations were used not as judges of authority but witnesses of fact: “It was a way of displaying that one was aware of the workings of the Baconian ‘Idols’ and was taking measures to mitigate their corrupting

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effects on knowledge-claims.” This “naked way of writing” “served to portray the author as a disinterested observer and his accounts as unclouded and undistorted mirrors of nature.”62

Bacon’s and Boyle’s objects were to speak literal truths — even if nonexistence were to become a reality, Boyle’s pump demonstrated that voids existed as stuff. Newton faced the same issue when he mixed red and violet light producing nonspectral purple, a psychologically generated colour that exists independently of external stuff. This frightened many and generated two hundred years of discussion, says Kuehni. Newton allayed these fears by fusing mathematics with induction; he aimed to end the “skeptical fallibilism”, that was a product of Bacon’s methodology, says Sepper .63

Newton hoped to reform the science of his day by uniting the tradition of the more ancient, mathematical sciences like statics and geometric optics with the way of careful experiment. The mathematical structure was not to be scientifically imposed by means of artificial hypothesis but was to be found, through experiments, as inhering in the very properties of the things of nature. In this way, induction would aim for and be enriched by powerful techniques of mathematics.64

When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) began his exploration of colour, Sepper notes that science “…had little to offer that would have been of any use to artists, craftsmen, dyers, chemists, or other technicians, and for the most part, did not even attempt to describe or explain phenomena like harmony and temperature of colours.” Newton was pedagogical about his observations and intolerant of the critiques, counter-observations, and theories of Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) and Hooke: these were forgotten in time. Newton’s observations became fixed in print and stagnated; the first practical uses of his observations were undertaken by Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826), measurements of light sources (Figure 12). He created the spectrometer in 1814 and measured the light wavelengths and recorded the positions of the dark absorption lines in the spectrum (Fraunhofer lines) caused by the sun’s chromospheres and the earth’s atmosphere. As a result of his numbering these lines, they became useful for characterising artificial light sources, and a tool for colour separations. Goethe first consulted Johan Christian Polykarp Erxleben’s encyclopaedia for an account of Newtonian optics, which implied that a spectrum could be seen by looking through a prism. The failure to see a spectrum motivated Goethe’s studies, and in his polemic against Newton in Zur Farbenlehre, 1810 he wrote:65

A great mathematician was possessed with an entirely false notion on the physical origin of colours; yet owing to his great authority as geometer, the

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mistake which he committed as an experimentalist long became sanctioned in the eyes of the world ever fettered in prejudices.66

When Eisenstein argues that print allowed for and facilitated the elimination of errors, she acknowledges that “press variants did multiply”; she argues that Erasmus could publish errata but in contrast St Jerome could not; nonetheless, errata requires reading. Newton’s seven fundamental colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, were fixed by print as the primary colours of the spectrum despite Newton’s description that the spectrum was a “continual succession perpetually varying”. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Goethe’s anti-Newtonian partner in crime, ranted about the fallacy of seven primary colours in On Vision and Colors 1816, despite having the intellect to fathom the truth from Newton’s Opticks.67

Goethe’s methodology was a “rigorous, even naive” version of Baconian induction, says Sepper: “…like any Baconian he was overcome by the profusion of nature.” He believed his contemporaries adhered to the Baconian program, that they collected all “natural and experimental histories”; most researchers, however, neglected this arduous task; it was unnecessary, for the histories had been recorded in print. He assumed his catalogue of virtuoso colour observations would show the flaws in Newton’s observations; his contemporaries focused instead on his rabid anti-Newtonism. Goethe recognised the subjectivism of the experimenter, Newton saw the experimenter as a variable in accuracy.68 Newton’s mathematisation of phenomena was a complete success; experimental science began to see “mathematicophysically”. Newton’s theories became fixed in the literature as scientific facts so his experiments were rarely repeated; his colour theories, culturally blackboxed, were invisible. Boyle’s program for “authentic testimony” became facts, Sepper explains:

A little-studied indicator of the development of the ‘certaintism’ in science is the change in usage of the word ‘fact’ in the eighteenth century. The original sense of the word (in Latin and the Romance languages as well as in English) was something done, a deed, and, derivatively, anything that has occurred. In the primary sense there was always a doer of the deed. The fact was definite in that it had a doer, a time, and a place; in the extended sense, it had at least a time and a place. In either case the actor or the event was visible, in evidence.69

The Newton–Goethe clash of giants did not end there; it was repeated in the German “School Wars” between the physicist Helmholtz’s dispositionalism and the eliminativism of psychologist Hering. Helmholtz considered vision a passive receptor of stimulus; all subjective colour effects he saw as attributable to “unconscious inference”, which is conceptually equivalent to the ancient pneuma. The Helmholtz school dismissed Hering’s

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opponent theory as “unconscious inference” and subjective; the Hering school argued that it was a biological process. The Young–Helmholtz trichromatic theory of vision was fixed within the science community as a mathematicophysical progeny of Newton. Helmholtz’s research was successfully fixed through print, he was published internationally in English from 1873 and, significantly, his Physiological Optics from 1924; a UNSW library edition was still in active use in the 1980s (Figure 13). Hering’s work was generally unknown, even though critiqued in later editions of Physiological Optics and summarised in Rood’s Modern Chromatics. In 1957, Hurvich and Jameson proved opponent theory to be a biological process and they in 1964 they translated into English Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, 1878 as Outlines of Theory of the Light Sense.70

Dispositionalism takes hold

This loosely painted account of optics and print brings us to the dawning of the twentieth- century colour reproduction; the philosophy of colour was quashed by the Young– Helmholtz theory, and colour is considered an objective property of light’s disposition to incite a sensation. Objectivity, intromission and dispositionalism from Democritus to Helmholtz had won the day. The genius of Newton – the new Aristotle – fixed within literature was beyond doubt. Extramission, eleminativisim and subjectivity that took full form in Goethe became curiosities for artists and the fledgling science of psychology. Bacon’s knowledge creating machines, Descartes’s success in using machines, Boyle’s virtual witnessing through machines and print, Newton’s mathematicophysical expressions of natural phenomena: all of these left early trichromatic printers – who are rarely philosophers – in a quandary. After centuries as craftsmen within nature and trusting their own experience, they now erred, believing the scientific verisimilitude presented to them. The printing industry adopted photography for the application of trichromatic theory and graphic artists expected a one-to-one relationship between an object and its recording.

Technoscience, a branch of the social studies of science, explores the mediation of knowledge by “Big Science.” Whereas machines were “other” for Ihde, Latour advocates anthropological symmetry. He explores equally humanism’s study of morality, subjectivity, rights; and its desire to be shielded from science, technology, and objectivity; as well as science’s politics/society split, and its endeavour to be “…purged of any contamination by subjectivity, politics, or passion”. McLuhan predicted that

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audio-visual technology would resynthesise our senses; Latour predicts technology to resynthesise nature and society. Modern societies include nonhumans, unlike non-modern societies; modernity is defined as the politics of human and nonhuman relations. Latour argues that the success of modern society to date is due to its creation of hybrids; however, neither science nor politics can accommodate or define them. Marxism was a failed hybridisation of man and production, and climate change is a hybrid that neither politics nor science can solve. Latour advocates the emancipation of hybrids – the new third estate — and a return of humans to the pre-modern state between nature and society. Shapin advises that a science historian has two tasks: “…to display the man-made nature of scientific knowledge, and to account for the illusion that this knowledge is not man-made.” McLuhan warns “…nobody could discover anything about the nature or effect of print without the careful study of Renaissance painting and new scientific models.” To make nonhumans apparent Latour commands that their technological histories be made visible.71

Photography revealed that verisimilitude in fine art was a Western local bias. Photography emancipated science from the engraver’s mark that mediated its observations. JC Janssen in 1888 remarked: “The sensitive photographic emulsion is the true retina of the scientists … the photographic retina preserves them and accumulates practically over limitless time.” Photographs are considered objective records; today, science observes with visual technologies. Latour calls this isomorphic, and McLuhan describes it as one-sensed. Scientists no longer perceive nature, they perceive their technologies; laboratories have become inscription-making devices and images facts. Graphic artists are “small scientists”; nevertheless, an account of their technological histories will reveal that they too have their own inscription-making devices. The following chapters endeavour to show that graphic artists tools are now Latourian hybrids of society, politics, nature, science and man. Subsequent chapters provide technological histories of colour measurement, trichromatic theory and print. Centralisation of colour and standardisation will be demonstrated, raising the threat of the disembodiment and death of colour practice. The chapter immediately following examines the artist-triad, of red, yellow, and blue; how hue became theoretically distinct from tone; and its parallel history with the printed image.72

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Chapter Two References

1 A Kircher and San Diego University of California, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae: Romani Collegii Societatus Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum: Magic Lantern Projecting a Soul in Purgatory, 1678, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3ovf1h6d yw%3D. 2 JFW Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse of the Study of Natural Philosophy (Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832) 105-08. LJ Schaaf, Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 5. 3 J Cameron, A Schwarzenegger, L Hamilton, M Bieln and MGM Home Entertainment Australia., The Terminator, 1984. 4 DL MacAdam, Selected Papers on Colorimetry-Fundamentals, SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77 (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1993) 9, T Young, “The Bakerian Lecture: On the Theory of Light and Colours,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 92 (1802): 20. 5 DC Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). CL Hardin, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988) xi-xxv. A Byrne and DR Hilbert, Readings on Color, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997) Vol. 1. xx. 6 Leonardo and San Diego University of California, Visual Pyramids Emanating from a Round Object, c15th, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3giclx9f C0%3D. 7 J Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993) 12. 8 Plato and Benjamin Jowett, Timaeus, 18/1/2008 360BCE & 2004, html text, Project Gutenberg; NetLibrary, Available: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/plato/p71ti/p71ti.zip. 9 J Gage, “Light from the East,” Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993). K Nassau, The Physics and Chemistry of Color: The Fifteen Causes of Color, Wiley Series in Pure and Applied Optics (New York: Wiley, 1983). D Baylor, “Colour Mechanisms of the Eye,” Colour: Art & Science, the Darwin College Lectures, eds. J Bourriau and T Lamb (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 103-26. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 12-13, 29, 42-43. Plato and Jowett, Timaeus. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 9-14. RA Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color (Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic, 1999) 13-14. RA Crone, “Licht, Kleur, Ruimte: De Leer Van Het Zien in Historisch Perspectief,” Documenta Ophthalmologica 96 (1999): 14-16. 10 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 24, 40. Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color 20-21. M Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (New York Harry N Abrams, 2002). David H Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision, Scientific American Library Series; No. 22, 2nd ed. (New York: Scientific American Library: Distributed by WH Freeman, 1995). SE Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: MIT Press, 1999). 11 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 137.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 45

Chapter Two References

B Berlin and P Kay, Basic Color Terms : Their Universality and Evolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 12 I Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. JMD (John Miller Dow) Meiklejohn, ed. Vasilis Politis (London: Everyman, 1934 & 1993) 248. 13 Hardin, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow 59. 14 E Hering, Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1920, 1964). PD Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1981). H von Helmholtz and JPC Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics (New York: Dover Publications, 1909 & 1962). G Hatfield, “Perception as Unconscious Inference,” Perception and the physical world (2002). Hardin, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow 40. CL Hardin, “Are ‘Scientific’ Objects Coloured?,” Mind 93.372 (1984). LM Hurvich and D Jameson, “An Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision,” Psychological Review 64 (1957). VA Billock and BH Tsou, Seeing Forbidden Colours, 2010, Available: http://search.ebscohost.com.wwwproxy0.library.unsw.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&A N=47359880&site=ehost-live. 15 A Kircher, and San Diego University of California. “Large Portable Camera Obscura”. 1646. ARTstor. http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3oodFR %2BfCg%3D. 16 DR Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism, CSLI Lecture Notes (Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1987) 2. GS Kirk, JE Raven and M Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers : A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, 2nd ed. (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 410. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 2, 7, 9, 39. Epicurus, “Letters to Herodotus” in Laertius Diogenes and Robert Drew Hicks, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Loeb Classical Library, Rev. and repr. ed., 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1925) vol. 2 577-79. Aristotle, WD Ross and JA Smith, The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910) 438a26-38b2. Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color 9-10. Aristotle, Ross and Smith, The Works of Aristotle 419a12-22. Aristotle, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 20 June 2007 350 BCE, html, The Univeristy of Adelaide Library, Available: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/sense/. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 16, 27. Aristotle, Metaphysics, (Adelaide: eBooks@Adelaide., 350 BCE), 12/6/09 http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/metaphysics/marc.bib J Onians, Neuroarthistory : From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki (New Haven, Conn. London: Yale University Press, 2007) 24. W Gamble, “Photographic Processes of Today,” Penrose Annual. Process Work Year Book, ed. William Gamble (London: Penrose & Company The Photo Process Stores, 1895) 10. Aristotle, Meteorologica, 20 June 2007 350 BCE, html, The Adelaide University Library, Available: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/meteorology/. 17 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 43, 44-46, 49. Avicenna, Le Livre De Science De Avicenna, Traductions De Textes Persans (Paris: Societe d’edition “Les Belles Lettres”, 1955) 2: 60. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 64 & 166] Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color. 18 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 57, 60-85.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 46

Chapter Two References

Alhazen and Friedrich Risner, Opticae Thesaurus Microform: Alhazeni Arabis Libri Septem (Basileae: per Episcopios, 1572) bk 1 chap 1 sec 1 p 1. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 64. Alhazen, AI Sabra and Warburg Institute, The Optics of Ibn Al-Haytham, Studies of the Warburg Institute ; V. 40 (Warburg Institute, University of London, 1989) Optics I, 31; II, 19f. Alhazen and Risner, Opticae Thesaurus Microform: Alhazeni Arabis Libri Septem bk 1 chap 5 sec 19 p 10. 19 RG Kuehni, Color Space and its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present (Hoboken, NJ: J Wiley, 2003) 30-31. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 98. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 288. 20 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 122. 21 H Gernsheim and A Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, [2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969) 1-19. DC Lindberg, “The Theory of Pinhole Images from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 5.2 (1968). Lindberg, “The Theory of Pinhole Images from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century.” Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962) 128, D Ihde and E Selinger, “Merleau-Ponty and Epistemology Engines,” Human Studies 27.4 (2004). 22 S Straker, “Kepler, Tycho, and the ‘Optical Part of Astronomy’: The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Pinhole Images,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 24.4 (1981). 23 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler. DC Lindberg, A Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Optical Manuscripts, Subsidia Mediaevalia, 4 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975). 24 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 202. 25 Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism 11, 13, 131. LT Maloney and Brian A Wandell, “Color Constancy: A Method for Recovering Surface Spectral Reflectance,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 3.1 (1986). A Byrne and DR Hilbert, “Color and Reflectances,” Readings on Color, eds. A Byrne and DR Hilbert, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997) 265. 26 Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism 26. 27 Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism 132. 28 Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism 40. 29 Kirk, Raven and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts 293. S Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Toronto; New York: Bantam Books, 1988) 61. H Paul, Introduction to Quantum Optics : From Light Quanta to Quantum Teleportation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 51. J Bourriau and T Lamb, Colour: Art & Science, The Darwin College Lectures (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 107. 30 R Descartes and San Diego University of California, Camera Obscura Reference: Analysis of the Eye, La Dioptrique., 1637, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gqfFh5e SI%3D. 31 The Milwaukee Journal, “Production of Rop Color in the Milwaukee Journal,” (1950), vol., 104. Lisa Dabscheck, Greg Barret and John Henry Martin, “Sydney Solo,” VIVE 2000.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 47

Chapter Two References

32 U Boner, Der Edelstein, the Illustrated Bartsch. Volume 80, German Book Illustration before 1500, 1461, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8zJTcjI2ISNZICc6fD4%3D 33 Marcantonio Raimondi and Florence/Art Resource SCALA, NY, The Climbers, 1519, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=4iFCeTg4NCciJy8laCt2KngqXXgqdVN% 2FdCw%3D. 34 WM Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press; MIT Press, 1969) 96. WA Chatto, HG Bohn and JW Jackson, A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical. With Upwards of Three Hundred Illustrations, Engraved on Wood, by John Jackson, Second edition, with a new chapter on the artists of the present day, by Henry G. Bohn, and 145 additional wood engravings. ed. (pp. xvi. 664. HG Bohn: London, 1861) 577. 35 D Fontana and San Diego University of California, Rome (Vatican): Egyptian Obelisk, Etching from Fontana’s Transporting the Vatican Obelisk, 1590, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3kpd1V %2BfCg%3. 36 R Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, to Which Is Prefixed the Life of the Author by Thomas Birch, A new edition. ed. (London: J&F Rivington, 1772). S Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology,” Social Studies of Science 14.4 (1984): 485. 37 JA Fraunhofer and San Diego University of California, Solar Spectrum, 1820, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gqfFh4c CY%3D. 38 Helmholtz and Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics. H von Helmholtz, E Javal and NT Klein, Optique Physiologique (Paris, 1867). 39 D Ihde, Bodies in Technology, Electronic Mediations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002) 137. D Ihde, “Epistemology Engines,” Nature 406.6791 (2000). Ihde and Selinger, “Merleau-Ponty and Epistemology Engines.” René Descartes, John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 57-72. Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings viii. Edward Craig, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2005) 181. 40 D Ihde, “The Structure of Technology Knowledge,” International Journal of Technology and Design Education 7.1 (1997). 41 J Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. A New Edition Corrected (Edinburgh: J Dickson; C Elliot, 1777) 228. 42 Ihde, Bodies in Technology xiii, 11, 39, 137. 43 Plato and B Jowett, The Portable Plato: Protagoras, Symposium, Phaedo, and the Republic : Complete, in the English Translation of Benjamin Jowett (New York: Penguin Books, 1979) 549. JR Searle, “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1980). 44 GW Leibniz and GM Duncan, The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1890) 220. 45 McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man 273. EL Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, England ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979) 33, 46 McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man 111-12. 47 McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man 111-12, 279. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 51.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 48

Chapter Two References

48 SH Steinberg and John Trevitt, Five Hundred Years of Printing, New ed. (London New Castle, DE: British Library; Oak Knoll Press, 1996) 7. 49 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 302. 50 Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler 122. 51 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 183-84. 52 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 317, 28. RWG Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour, Wiley-IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology, 6th ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004) 447. 53 Hilbert and Center for the Study of Language and Information (US), Color and Color Perception: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism 5. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. 54 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication 180. 55 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication 163-66. 56 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication 66. 57 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication 86. 58 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication 108. 59 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 18. F Bacon, The New Organon or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature, 1620, The Constitution Society, Available: http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm. Craig, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 82. DL. Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 41. 60 Bacon, The New Organon or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature. CB McClendon, “The History of the Site of St Peter’s Basilica, Rome,” Perspecta 25 (1989). Domenico Fontana, Della Trasportatione Dell’obelisco Vaticano, E Delle Fabriche Di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V., Fatte Dal Cavalier D. F. Libro Primo (Roma, 1590). 61 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 570-71. 62 Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology,” 486-88, 91-97. RBoyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours. First Occasionally Written, among Some Other Essays, to a Friend; and Now Suffer’d to Come Abroad as the Beginning of an Experimental History of Colours (For Henry Herringman: London, 1664). 63 Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 45. Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color 202-03. 64 Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color 42. 65 Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color 30, 36. LW Sipley, A Half Century of Color (New York: Macmillan, 1951) 5. Ian Ridpath, J von Fraunhofer, 2007, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t80.e1365. Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color 36. GC Lichtenberg, JCP Erxleben and Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Lichtenbergs Annotiertes Handexemplar Der Vierten Auflage Von Johann Christian Polykarp Erxleben, “Anfangsgründe Der Naturlehre”, Gesammelte Schriften: Historisch-Kritische Und Kommentierte Ausgabe / Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005). 66 JW von Goethe, Theory of Colours (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1840 & 1970) 287. 67 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe 80.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 49

Chapter Two References

I Newton, Opticks, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light Microform, 4 ed. (London: Prometheus Books, 1730) 122. A Schopenhauer, Georg Stahl and PO Runge, On Vision and Colors Color Sphere, 1st ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). 68 Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color 167-68, 76. 69 Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color 165. 70 RS Turner, “Vision Studies in Germany: Helmholtz Versus Hering,” Osiris 8 (1993). ON Rood and F Birren, Modern Chromatics; Students’ Text-Book of Color, with Applications to Art and Industry (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1879 & 1973). E Hering, LM Hurvich and D Jameson, [Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn.] Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense ... Translated by Leo M. Hurvich and Dorothea Jameson. [with Illustrations.] (pp. xxvii. 317. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1964). Hurvich and Jameson, “An Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision.” Hatfield, “Perception as Unconscious Inference.” 71 Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology,” 510. McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man 145. B Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999) 1-23. B Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) 101. 72 J Darius, Beyond Vision (Oxford [Oxfordshire]; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) 11. Ihde, Bodies in Technology 44. Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication. B Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987).

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 50

Figure 1: Tiziano Vecellio: Danaë, Mother of Perseus, 1554.1

3. Design from Colour

Now it chanced that Michelangelo and Vasari, going one day to see Titian in the Belvedere, beheld a picture, which he had just then finished, of a nude figure representing Danaë, with Jupiter transformed into a shower of gold in her lap, many of those present beginning to extol the work (as people do when the artist stands by) praised it not a little: when, all having left the place, and talking of Titian’s work, Buonarroto, declared that the manner and colouring of that artist pleased him greatly, but that it was a pity the Venetians did not study drawing more, ‘for if this artist,’ said he, ‘had been aided by Art and knowledge of design, as he is by nature, he would have produced works which none could surpass, more especially in imitating life, seeing that he has a fine genius, and a graceful animated manner.’ – Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects2

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 51 Introduction

Figure 2: Albert H Munsell: colour tree and sphere, 1919.3

Albert H Munsell (1858-1918) in Colour Notation, 1905 defines the following concepts: “Hue is the name of a Colour”; “Value is the lightness of a Colour”; and “Chroma is the strength of a colour”; and he said, “It may sound strange to say that colour has three dimensions, but it is easily proved by the fact that each of them can be measured separately.” What is strange is that I do not recall learning it, or that it was ever misunderstood (Figure 2). While I was tracking advances in early colour printing, it became apparent to me that as printing developed better colour verisimilitude, simultaneously, colour theorists developed models with greater verisimilitude for the visual process. At the end of this chapter are a series of figures that demonstrate this evolution. The figures are categorised into centuries that correspond with the following chapters. Because there are a large number of figures they have been placed at the end of the chapter to prevent breaking the flow of the text – at this point I would look through these images to get an overview of the changes that occurred. This visual timeline ends at the beginning or the twentieth century – the ongoing development of colour verisimilitude is further illustrated in chapters five and six. Another timeline that focuses

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 52 on the dates of the evolution of colour theory and technology is included as an appendix to this thesis.

Kuehni and Schwarz’s Colour Order describes system development from Aristotle’s linear scale through to twentieth-century neurobiological and psychophysical systems; however, this chapter focuses only on the one-, two-, and three-dimensional systems. The aim here is to suggest another feedback loop between printers and knowledge-makers. To achieve this end, this chapter includes illustrations that imply a parallel history (see also timeline appendix). Ivins described an unfriendly alliance between painters and printers; David Pankow in Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes, 1998 is more forthright: “As far as the artist is concerned, the printer is a mere mechanic who cheerfully and infuriatingly engages in the process of reduction; he is an efficient expert who seeks to summarise a richly varied palette by means of a few primary colours, artfully arranged to illude the eye into seeing more.”4

The artful arrangement of colour to illude the eye will be the climax of our story here; however, verisimilitude in Western art has a lengthy history. Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79AD), in his Naturalis Historia, relates a story regarding a painting competition between Zeuxis, who painted grapes that deceived birds, and Parrhasius who painted a curtain that deceived Zeuxis. Parrhasius won, for his verisimilitude outwitted Zeuxis. Plinius provides an account of primary colours as well: “Four colours only — white from Milos, Attic yellow, red from Sinope on the Black Sea, and black called atramentum — were used by Apelles.” Gage emphasises that these four vague terms obtained varied interpretations through different ages; and that the crosshatching techniques of encaustic and tempera and a philosophical “reluctance to experiment with mixtures” led to the late development of the painter’s triad: red, yellow and blue. Advances in oil paint technology such as practised by Jan van Eyck (1395-1441) allowed the pursuit of richness, depth, colour and verisimilitude through glazing that cannot be achieved by mixing (Figure 5). To equal painters, printers needed to overcome printing’s intrinsic hard edges and advance the technology to represent tone and texture with colour. The advance from the localised colour of woodcut, to engraving and etching, to the tonal effects in mezzotint, stipple, and aquatint was slow. To achieve repeatable colour verisimilitude, Giorgio Vasari’s (1511-1574) disegno and colore as promoted in the Lives… must evolve into Munsell’s Value and Hue.5

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 53 Fifteenth Century

Before Aristotle and Plato’s literary recovery, their concepts were transmitted to the West through centuries of confused commentaries. Chalcidius’s fourth-century translation of Timaeus established a Platonic five-colour scale, white, yellow, red, blue and black. Translations of Aristotle from Arabic began arriving in the West after the fall of Toledo to the Christians in 1085. Woodcut technique from Asia travelled on the same pathway through Spanish Islam. China’s Diamond Sutra of 868 (Figure 3) is the world’s oldest dated and printed book; in the West the oldest dated print is the Saint Christopher of 1423 (Figure 4). Decorated papers, playing cards, and single sheet religious prints were printed by woodcut and usually hand coloured (Figure 7). Vasari attributed printing from engraved metal printing to Maso Finiguerra (1426-1464) (Figure 12) and etching to Daniel Hopfer (1470-1563) (Figure 19). Letterpress printing in colour was laborious and soon abandoned for handwork by rubricators or printed woodcut initials. “Gutenberg would have assumed automatically that his Bible would need headings in red, …but clearly this proved technically difficult and unrealistically time-consuming,” says Christopher De Hamel and Pankow notes that printers “…were stymied by the problems of registration.”6

Peter Schöffer (c1425-1503) and Johann Fust (c1400-1466) did not capitulate to the colour problem and printed a Psalter in red, blue and purple (Figure 6). Ehard Ratdolt (1447-1527) was “…one of the most skilled and enterprising printers of his age”, says Burch. After hand colouring an astronomical treatise he later printed its coloured diagrams in yellow, red, and black; the novelty of the work was inspiration for other printers. In 1864, Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786-1889) noted that flat colour painting preceded chiaroscuro and argued that we need not “…abandon it to practise exclusively the system of painting where all the modifications of light are reproduced”. Letterpress prints in flat colours, a technique known as linework and rarely used today used except for newspaper cartoons. Burch thought these colour printer’s efforts at this “new art” valiant with their “…crude mechanical appliances … they were as men feeling their way, amidst the as yet imperfectly understood intricacies of an industry whose great possibilities were probably undreamt…”.7

The rendering of light began in the Renaissance when optical technology, observation, theory, and practice synthesised. Moshe Barasch in Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art, 1978 argues that new theories of light were “born of the workshop” and that the Renaissance broke with the medieval tradition of engendering the

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 54 divine light. Vasari’s disegno equates with artistic creation; colore was an object quality localised to surfaces; and light was utilitarian: it revealed relief. Later, light becomes the subject of painting through dazzling effects and picture colour. Cennino Cennini (1370-1440) in Il libro dell’arte, 1390 classified light under disegno, and colour as Aristotle had done; he advocated naturalism through observing light. Leon Battista Alberti’s (1404-1472) Della Pittura remakes rhetoric’s invention, disposition, and elocution into circumspection (drawing), composition (invention), and reception of lights (theory). In a step towards the separation of luminance from hue, he advocated verisimilitude of surface effects with light, shade and passing over forms and surface colours to render a medieval splendour. Gage states that his “…emphasis on black, white, and grey … was in no sense an argument for disegno against colore … a painting should be well drawn (bene conscriptam), it should also be excellently (optime) coloured.” He delineates tone from colour notes that from mixtures infinite other colours can be made.8

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) was informed by the optics of Bacon, Witello and Peckham; however, as he never published his ideas had little influence in his own time (Figure 8). He thought the infinite transitions of light and shadow were the purview of artists and scientists rather than disegno or form, which is merely measurable; colour was only of merit to its manufacturers. Valuing form over line, he advocated rendering “‘soft’ transitions and ‘sweet’ shades”. He defined four lights: universal (in the air), specific (through openings), reflected and translucent. He observed, as had Alberti, that colours of objects are imparted to other objects by reflected light and recommended avoiding such reflections by using the universal light found in overcast weather or early evening, or by placing objects against backgrounds of analogous colour. His colour scale, like Hering’s, was black, white, blue, yellow, green and red. Mezzo for Leonardo was, Barasch stressed “…the domain of the painter, the domain of the visible world and the representable. Both darkness and pure light transcend the realm of what can be represented.” Gage asserts that Leonardo was “…setting up a model of beauty in colouring … especially difficult to translate into painting while giving due attention to relief.” His light has equivalence to the CIE lighting standard D: A is tungsten lamp, B is tungsten filtered to represent daylight; and C is from an overcast sky. C is refined to: D55 yellowish sunlight with skylight, D65 typical sunlight, and D75 bluish northern sunlight. His neutral surround is equivalent to graphic arts standard ISO 3664:2000: D55 light, grey surrounds for reflective copy, and black for transparencies.9

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 55 Sixteenth Century

Early sixteenth-century book printers resorted to hand colouring full-page woodcuts or piercing out sections of the blocks for the separate colours. Typographic colour was minimal, mostly the ubiquitous red lettering in commentaries, encyclopedias and almanacs (Figure 18). Colour work primarily occurred on the continent, England feared rousing “Romanist associations”. Burch admires this period of typography for its beauty, faultless technique, general arrangement, and “the wealth of pictorial embellishments and ornamental detail”. Chiaroscuro woodcut printing, despite its limitation to linework, develops to fulfil the need to reproduce the light and shades of Renaissance drawing. Monochrome keyblocks were overprinted with large areas of flat colour; Burch emphasises that “… the chiaroscuro artist made no attempt to represent scenes of objects in their natural colours”, preferring sombre colours, such as: “olive-green, reddish brown, dark brick red, and pale yellow”. Despite Ugo Di Carpi’s (c1502-32) claim of invention (Figure 17), Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) (Figure 13) was its inventor, with improvements by Jost De Negker (c1485-1544) (Figure 14). German technique was precise compared with the Italians, who embraced the inherent disegno of a woodblock with boldness and bravura. Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538) produced multicoloured prints in Heringesque primaries: red, green, blue, yellow and brown (Figure 15). The chiaroscuro print was only suitable for individual prints; despite this John Schott used it for a title page in the Lectura Super Liber Decretalium, 1510 with borders in black and brown. Ludwig Senfl’s Liber Selectarum Cantorium is printed variously in red, grey, blue, flesh-pink, gold, black, and greenish-yellow (Figure 16), Burch remarks that it is “…perhaps, the most elaborate piece of bookwork in colours that has come down to us.” The use of gold leaf indicates the technique’s lack of verisimilitude.10

Publication of Vasari’s Lives, 1550 fixed the notion that disegno was superior to colore. Gage explains this division: disegnato (drawing), ombrato (shading), incarnato (which includes colouring), and finally rilevato (three dimensions). Paolo Pino’s (1534-65) Dialogo di Pittura 1548 rejected Alberti’s optical approach and initiated the Venetian emphasis on psychological and atmospheric effects. Pino sought a fusion of virtuoso representation and expression with colour, light and symbolism. Light was the soul of colour for Venetians; they emphasised picture colour, tone, light, and the obscuring of local colour. This practice reinforced mezzetint and was thought to allow better perception and representation of the material world. This is concordant with colour balancing three- and four-colour reproduction by correct rendering of grey. Gage

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 56 emphasises that in sixteenth-century art academies the delineation of disegno and colore became an intellectual exercise. Colour was a secondary consideration to the graphic techniques of impasto, rendering of volumes and forms on a picture plane. He remarks that Federico Barocci, a forerunner to El Greco, was perhaps the first artist who balanced drawing and colour (Figure 20).11

Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538-1600) approached light and colour with a confused amalgam of art treatises, natural sciences and mysticism – a tendency that the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution could not quash. Itten wrote in 1961: “The end and aim of all artistic endeavour is liberation of the spiritual essence of form and colour and its release from the imprisonment of objects.” For Lomazzo light was functional, expressive, symbolic, and observing it leads to excellence in drawing and disegno. He asserted Aristotle’s distinction between light and colour: objects and pigments are disposed to reflect; and artists to represent the antagonisms, harmonies, and symbolism of those reflections. He blends science with astrology to designate seven artist types: “Michelangelo to Saturn, Gaudenzio to Jupiter, Polidoro to Mars, Leonardo to the Sun, Raphael to Venus, Mantegna to Mercury and Titian to the Moon.” Where Cennini was medieval and functional Lomazzo is theoretically extreme and bizarre. In 1985, Faber Birren (1900-1988) was troubled by science’s “well-ordered systems of colour order (Munsell, Ostwald, NCS, OSA)” and the assumption “…that there may be similar criteria in emotional responses to colour”.12

Seventeenth Century

Ludwig von Siegen’s (1609-c1680) mezzotint is a print technique, which clearly demonstrates that colour is not a mixture of darkness and light. It is noted for images with rich velvety tones built up by a minute burr created with a rocker and burnishing. Rarely printed in colour, mezzotint was merely an additional technique for the printer (Figure 26). Burch contends that the seventeenth-century “…appears to be the least fruitful of all periods in the annals of pictorial colour printing. The enthusiasm … had quite died out, and in its place we have illustration of a very commonplace order.” Frederick Bloemaert (c1616-1690) made an unusual advance by using woodcut to colour engravings and etchings (Figure 30). In 1623 George Lalleman (1575-1636) failed in his attempt to develop a three-colour press. J Baptistam Bidellium printed De Lactibus Sive Lacteis Venis, 1627, a treatise of human internal organs printed in flesh, dark red, black, with white engraved out (Figure 24). Hercules Seghers (1625-1679) produced single coloured

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 57 etchings, sometimes blue and occasionally hand tinted (Figure 25). Abraham Bosse (1602-1676) invented a masking process to separate printing colours. Johannes Teyler (1646-1709) was the “first true colour printer from copper plates”, according to Franklin and Franklin. He inked the plates line-by-line by brush; Burch considers Teyler a hobbyist, although Holland granted him a 15-year patent in 1688. His assistants maintained his technique and of the 300-350 colour prints from the studio it is impossible to distinguish those by Teyler (Figure 31).13

Before Newton physicians, philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, monks, priests, theologians, mystics, architects, artists, goldsmiths all ruminate on colour; but all adhered to Aristotle’s harmonic scale. “Linear scales are the least complex and the easiest-to- comprehend ways to view colour order, which is why they have persisted,” according to Kuehni and Schwarz. In 1629, Robert Fludd (1574-1637) bent Aristole’s linear scale into a circle joining black and white (Figure 23). Sigfridus Aronus Forsius (1560-1624) also created a circular model with warm and cool colours opposed across a central tonal axis (Figure 21). In 1601, physician VA Scarmilionius is interested in primary colours as a diagnosis aid; he describes a sequence of white, yellow, blue, red and black. Boyle in Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, 1664 observes that painters could mix all colours with a few “Simple and Primary Colours …White, and Black, and Red, and Blew, and Yellow; these five, Variously Compounded”. In a criticism of Kenelm Digby’s linear colour scale Samuel Van Hoogstraten (1627-78) made reference to colour primaries in the 1670s. The diagrams of Roman philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Beothius (c480-524) explaining music and logic inspired colour scales of François d’Aguilon (1566-1617), Athanasius Kircher (c1602-1680), and Zacharias Traber (1611- 1679) (Figure 22), (Figure 27), (Figure 28). These diagrams exploded the Aristotelian scale into two dimensions giving independence to black and white, with mixtures of red, yellow and blue. Johannes Zahn (1631-1707) developed these scales into a colour triangle with a linear scale on the base of black, red, yellow, and white. High in the triangle replaces the term cinereus (grey) with aqueus (light blue) (Figure 29). Francis Glisson (c1597-1677) takes a physicalist approach by using pigment weights in a scale similar to Forsius.14

Newton’s letter to the Royal Society outlining his New Theory about Light and Colours, 1671 creates centuries of confusion by adopting the art terms “primary” and “compounded”; later, the Opticks, 1704 contained Boyle-like neutral terms: “simple” and “homogeneal” but the damage was done. He provided one lasting definition for primary

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 58 colours: a hue that is irreducible, not made from mixtures of rays; this contrasts with Hooke for whom primaries were the colours from which all others are made.15 Boyle observed additive mixtures: “The Green and Red made a Dark Orange Tawny,” and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), who thought of light as waves, reasoned that yellow and blue on Newton’s circle should mix to white. This confounded Newton, but it is correct and was later explained by Helmholtz. Newton, a harmonist, divided his circle into musical ratios, with centres of gravity defining colour mixtures within the circle; however, it is the first additive colour model (Figure 32). Kuehni remarks that it “…represented a sea change in thinking about colours, opening furious extended discussions only settled some 200 years later.”16

Eighteenth Century

Burch notes that Johann Georg Häffner’s kicks off the eighteenth century by printing all the works of thirteen-century mathematician and mystic Ramon Llull in a typographic opus of blue, green, red, yellow and purple. Despite this Burch says: “Pictorial printing in colours seems to have been quite unknown in England until Le Blon’s time, as the elementary armorial devices of the Boke of St Albans (Figure 10) can scarcely be ranked as pictures.” In 1915, Schenkkan wrote: “Like a Meteor Le Blon illuminated the sky of Art of his time. He was admired and worshipped; then he vanished and has been forgotten.” Burch stresses that few three-colour or trichromatic printers were: “…aware that the principle was not only understood, but practised nearly [three] hundred years ago … the only important difference being that Le Blon had not the use of a camera…”. Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667-1741) could mentally analyse the hue densities of an artwork and reproduce it in three- or four-colour mezzotints (Figure 34).17 He sought a mechanical application of the rules of painting:

I discovered that my plans would be practicable it I could find the perfect primitive colours under artists’ paints. When finally I found them so close to primitive colours that I could not only not miss any of the intermediate colours by mixing them, I began to discover that in following these principles, painting could represent all visible objects perfectly and easily, not only by the means of the painter’s brush, but also by printing…18

The search for pure hues continued to be an issue for early trichromatic process printers. A miniaturist when CB’s colour guide for miniature artists was published; Kuehni, Schwarz, and I have all conjectured its influence on his process (Figure 33). CB was influenced by Newton, as was Le Blon, who said: “I am fpeaking of Material Colours, thofe ufed by Painters; for a Mixture of all the primitive impalpable Colours, that cannot

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 59 be felt, will not produce Black, but the very Contrary, White; as the Great Sir Isaac Newton has demonftrated in his Opticks.”19

Colonel John Guise invested in Le Blon’s The Picture Office which aimed to produce prints and tapestries. Le Blon had no business sense but after his dismissal his engravers found they were unable to produce the colour synthesis without his direction. It has been asked, why did he reveal his process in Coloritto? Gage suggests he was appealing to the new science museums but a citation at the Royal Society was an excellent marketing strategy. I believe Le Blon was adhering to the spirit of his age and revealed his process in Coloritto so that: “It may not be kept a Secret for the future, but in due Time improv’d by more skilful Hands…” And, in due time it was! He realised that a black keyplate made grey reproduction easier, saving on expensive coloured ink, hastened production, and contrast made the colours brighter: a process known today known as grey component reduction (GCR) or under colour removal (UCR). When Le Blons died in France in 1741, his employee of six weeks, Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty (1716-1785) claimed Le Blon’s privilege for himself, but this was later revoked. Gautier-Dagoty spent his life claiming the black keyplate as his own invention and deriding Le Blon as a Newtonian. An advocate of Aristotle’s linear scale, he wrote polemics against Newton, and Goethe later defended these views. Nevertheless, Gautier-Dagoty’s anatomical works contributed to improved verisimilitude in scientific representation (Figure 35).20

Concurrently with Le Blon, Edward (Elisha) Kirkall (1682-1742) produced mixed technique colour prints of etching, woodcut and mezzotint; he favoured green, yellow, and brown tints (Figure 40). Nicholas Le Sueur (1690-1764), who inspired Kirkall’s method, reproduced famous artworks in green and brown; red and blue; overprinted with yellowish, or reddish tints (Figure 41). He in turn was inspired by Arthur Pond (1705-1758) and C Knapton (1700-1760) whose work almost eliminated chiaroscuro woodcut as a commercial process. AM Zanetti (1680-1757) and his son sustained the technique; the latter taught the process to John Baptist Jackson (1701-1780), who, while in Venice, reproduced the Italian masters in black on a yellowish ground (Figure 42). On returning to England he produced pictorial paper hangings, wrote an Essay on Engraving and Printing in Chiaroscuro, 1754 that claimed to have rediscovered Ugo Da Carpi’s technique. Jackson’s main claim was the invention of oil-based inks.21 Goldsmith Lutma the Elder (1584-1669) invented punch engraving which was improved by Jean François (1717-1796) into crayon style in an imitation of red, black, or blue chalk drawing. In stipple techniques dots are etched with a ground then enhanced with a burin; the process

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 60 resembles stochastic screening. A brown or grey key was printed followed by plates inked à la poupée with bright colours. A meticulous technique, it was used to reproduce watercolours; and as with later photogravures, plate wear meant it was rarely used for book illustration (Figure 45). Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815) published a book of Holbein’s Portraits of Personages at the Court of Henry VIII and was one of the last stipple printers in England (Figure 43). Burch maintains that stipple printing inaugurates modern colour printing:22

The colour print now began, for the first time in the history of pictorial art, to be in public favour, there being almost as great a demand for them as there is to-day, having regard, of course to the fact that the supply was vastly greater than it is now.23

Barasch argued theories of light and colour are “born of the workshop”; this is equally true of Le Blon and Newton. Newton experimented with coloured pigments as a boy. Kuehni observes that Newton’s hue circle is “…a pattern that may become subconsciously apparent and is the result of one of the strategies of the visual system;” it inspired new colour models. Under the influence of Newton and Le Blon, Louis Bertrand Castel (1688-1757) divided the spectrum into twelve parts, he recognised three hues mixed to grey. Tobias Mayer (1723-1762) produced a colour triangle of red, yellow, and blue blending in twelve steps, which extrapolates into two pyramids with mixtures of black and white at their peaks. These models distinguish hue from luminosity; it is interesting to conjecture the extent to which they were influenced by Le Blon’s black keyplate and Gautier-Dagoty’s life-long tirades against him in the French press. Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777) was acquainted with Gautier-Dagoty’s print techniques and constructed a physical model of the Mayer’s pyramids; his base triangle has nine steps rather than twelve. He determined his mixtures by weight on the light-coloured pyramid and he diffused the pigments with medium rather mixing with white (Figure 38). Ignaz Schiffermüller (1727-1806), an entomologist, transformed Castel’s twelve steps into a circle of opponents in red/green and indigo/orange (Figure 37). Moses Harris (1731-1785), also an entomologist as well as an engraver, published Natural System of Colour, 1770 containing two charts: prismatic, with mixtures of red, yellow and blue; and compound, with mixtures of orange, green and purple. He is aware of the distinction between Le Blon’s palpable and Newton’s impalpable colours, for he defines white as an absence of colour and black as a mixture of all. Subtractive colour mixing is explained through analogy to overlapping triangles representing: “three triangular pieces of flain’d glafs” (Figure 39). His expression “natural colour” implies objectivity, it is synonymous

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 61 with colour verisimilitude, and the term pervades handbooks from this time; for instance, E König’s Natural Colour Photography, 1906 and Natural Colour System, 1978 of the Scandinavian Color Institute. Anticipating Young but not known till the twentieth century, Chrétian-Ernst Wünsch (1744-1828) was contrary to Newton in conceiving of light with three constituents: red, green and violet; he also noted that red and green light mixed to yellow. In 1777, a glass merchant called George Palmer (c1746-1826) suggested the constituents of light were red, yellow and blue; and that the retina had three matching particles. In 1809 James Sowerby (1757-1822) produced a colour rhomboid from the artist’s triad in an attempt at scientific standardisation. In 1810, Goethe derives a colour circle from successive contrast observations (Figure 46).24

Nineteenth Century

Contrary to the claims made by JC Ploos van Amstel’s (1726-1798), Jean Baptiste Le Prince (1733-1781) invented aquatint; he specialised in prints imitating wash drawings in brown, sepia or grey (Figure 36). In the aquatint process, acid-resistant resin is fused with a plate then bitten with acid for varying effects. Through the stages of the bite portions of the plate are protected with varnish or bitumen. In France, the technique became multicoloured, with pins used to register the plates. Paul Sandby (1725-1809), who only printed in monochrome, received details of the process from Charles Greville after its purchase from La Prince; thirty years later, FC Lewis (1779-1856) published Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora, printing in green, blue and red (Figure 48). Burch remarks that: “…generally, the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow, were used in combination with a black key plate to produce the French colour aquatints of the late eighteenth century, so that Le Blon’s method had been adapted from the old mezzotinting to the new etching process.” Letterpress evolved little until William Blake (1757-1827) – another anti-Newtonian – began drawing his text and illustrations with a resist and printing from the plate surface. This method became known as typographic printing and it is adopted for three-colour image publishing (Figure 51). Despite the popularity of multi-coloured engraving in the nineteenth century it had limited use due to plate wear; it could not be printed simultaneously with letterpress matrixes. However, Bewick’s wood engraving fulfilled this need and he popularised the technique by training the next generation of printers.25

William Savage (1770-1843), printer to the Royal Institution, experimented with the water based inks and was critical of recipes in the available encyclopedias, dictionaries

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 62 and manuals. In the spirit of Boyle he published his research, professing: “…that every statement I have made is the result of my own practice.” His aim was to democratise printing: “…so that all classes might enjoy such works of art as were formerly beyond their reach.” Practical Hints on Decorative Printing with Illustrations Engraved on Wood and Printed in Colours at the Type Press, 1822 contained multicoloured chiaroscuros printed in bright colours instead of traditional muted tones, and some were printed without keyplates (Figure 50). One plate, Ode to Mercy, “…is perhaps the most complicated job ever printed in colours,” wrote Burch in 1910. It was produced in four sepias, yellow, puce, two blues, four reds, four greys, light grey, light yellow, mauve, three pinks and green. Pankow notes that it was a heroic effort; however, even Savage admitted the result was harsh. Pankow remarks that Benjamin Fawcett (1808-1893) was reputedly a genius of wood engraving; “…few of his London contemporaries could match and none surpass him,” and he was renowned for his ability to deconstruct… an original to a minimum of colours (Figure 62). Before George Baxter (1804-1867) perfected his oil process there was little colour printing in England (Figure 58). He claimed invention of the oil process without acknowledging Jackson. An excellent draftsman and colourist, a meticulous printer; Baxter achieved perfection in registration of the adjacently printed colours; the process combined aquatint, mezzotint, or lithograph keyblocks overlaid with colour from wood or metal blocks. Just before his death he patented a process that used photography for the keyplate. Courtney Lewis in George Baxter… His Life and Work, 1908 comments: “Baxter gave to colour printing the stimulus printing gave to letters; and from his day there could be taken into the homes of the masses, for the first time, for their education and other advantage, imitations of coloured pictures that were artistic and reasonably cheap.” One of his apprentices, George C Leighton (1826-1895), published The Coloured News with wood engravings, and was the supplier of four- and five- coloured blocks to the Illustrated London News. Charles Knight (1791-1873), the publisher of the Penny Magazine, modified a Ruthven press with a rotating prism to print in red, yellow, blue, and overprinted black; it adopted the term “printer’s devil”. He overprinted colours rather than registering them to increase the range of hues. The Baxter oil method was an unrivalled process until the inception of chromolithography.26

Lithography was discovered by a happy accident by Alois Senefelder (1771-1834) while writing a shopping list on a stone. It relies on the antipathy of grease and water; drawings are chemically fixed; the stone is wetted, repelling the oily ink from the nonprinting areas (Figure 49). Early prints resembled chiaroscuro; as technique improved it developed into an of imitation ink, pencil, and chalk drawing. Rudolf Ackermann (1764-1834)

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 63 popularised the process in England by publishing Senefelder’s treatise in 1818. Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789-1850) “…pioneered methods of creating tonal effects on stone using a variety of techniques (stump, reserving lights with gum Arabic, and creating tones with coarse cloth),” says Michael Twyman (Figure 52). He is responsible for what Tywman considers “the finest of all lithographic publications”: Thomas Shotter Boys, Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, 1839 (Figure 53).27

Owen Jones (1809-1874) fitted out William Day’s (1797–1845) printing establishment as Senefelder’s treatise had suggested for lithographic printing from metal plates for the publication of his: Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra, 1842 (Figure 55); and The Grammar of Ornament, 1856 (Figure 57). Burch equates Paul Lacroix (1806-1884) and Ferdinand Séré’s (1818-1855), Le Moyen Âge et la Renaissance as France’s chromolithographic technical equivalent of the Alhambra, 1848 (Figure 56). Chromolithography came of age when it threw off keyplates and composed pictures through colour fusion alone and producing their designs solely from colour. Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839) coined the term “chromolithography” in 1837 while patenting three- and four-colour techniques in an imitation of Le Blon. Burch remarks that: “Three-colour work from stone … was long considered to rank among the possibilities that was doomed not to succeed…”. However, Twyman remarks: “The novelty of the processes of both Engelmann and Hullmandel lay in the division of the image into a number of separate printings, in the manufacture of the coloured inks, and especially in the exact registration of the impressions.” Owing to colour’s complexity, lithographic artists focused on the commercial and industrial aspects of printing. The industrialisation of printing developed incrementally; Rose-Joseph Lemercier’s (1803-1857) company in France was completely industrialised by 1870 (Figure 65). At their peak production they held an archive of fifty thousand stones, producing chromolithographs, photolithographs, steel engravings, and etchings, and ultimately adding steam powered presses. Lemercier observed: “Our industry has almost completely lost its artistic side, we are left with only a few artists capable of making objects of art.” Cognisant of photography’s threat, Lemercier consulted scientists to determine if lithography and photography could be fused into one technology.28

Kuehni writes: “The step from simple, linear, more-or-less lightness-based colour order systems to hue circles and related tint/shade scales took some 2,000 years. At that point, progress towards three-dimensional systems came relatively rapidly.” Otto Runge (1777-1810) is often regarded as the creator of the modern system: a sphere. He placed

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 64 red, yellow, and blue on an equator; tertiary colours mixing around the equator; with three primaries mixing to grey in the centre, black at the base, and white at the peak – which was implied in Newton’s circle. Aiming for a perceptually uniform model, his primary colours are ideal rather than based on pigments (Figure 47). Kuehni and Schwarz consider this model as “the most complete produced to that time” despite “several unresolved issues”, even so “…Goethe thought that Runge’s sphere ‘has successfully concluded this kind of effort’”. Silk merchant Gaspard Grégoire (1751-1846) creates a system that implies hues were aligned to luminance through his use of a five-part grey scale, unfortunately his work was not well know. In 1816, the painter Matthias Klotz (1748-1821) distinguished chromatic and prismatic colours but he mistakenly thought of them as having the same primaries yellow, blue and violet. He was the first to publish a grey scale. According to Kuehni and Schwarz, the systems of Grégoire and Klotz prefigure the work of Munsell. In 1839, Chevreul famous for his systematic approach to simultaneous, successive, and mixed contrasts, divided a colour circle with the three primaries and twenty-four steps of flat tints between (Figure 60). The primaries, aligned to white, rise to black in fifteen steps to form a hemisphere. The model’s objective was to assist craftsmen to determine contrast effects. Kuehni and Schwarz note that Runge, Grégoire, Klotz, and Chevreul’s three-dimensional models all lacked geometrical explanations of their internal structures; such a structure is not conceived until Munsell.29

James Clerk Maxwell in 1857 published Experiments in Colour, On the Theory of Compound Colours, 1860 and, in 1861, to prove the three-colour nature of vision he invented three-colour photography and demonstrated it at the Royal Society. The modern era of colour science begins with Kepler’s retinal image, progresses through Newton’s Opticks, Young’s Theory of Light and Colours and ultimately arrive with Maxwell and tartan ribbon photo (Figure 59).30 Scientists of many ilks attempt to define colour… As the Renaissance and printing was an “accident of timing,” the nineteenth-century colour science benefited from the accident of transformation of the camera obscura into photography. Without this technology, Young’s trichromatic theory of vision would have been an impractical proto-theory as Newton’s Opticks had been.

In 1866, Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke (1819-1892) attempted to generate a perceptual colour sphere based on object colours; it has a large green area similar to the future CIE diagram. William Benson created a rhombic prism in 1868 foreshadowing the Photoshop colour picker, with white and black at opposing points; with three primaries adjacent to black; and with tertiary hues adjacent to white (Figure 63). In 1873, Wilhelm von Bezold

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 65 (1837-1907) created a chromaticity diagram for the use of artists and artisans, based on Maxwell’s work, it formed a cone with chromatic colours aligned white at the base. In 1879 Ogden Nicholas Rood (1831-1902) designed a colour cylinder with black and white at either end defined by pigment names and colour contrasts. In 1883 Hermann Scheffer (1820-1903) attempted to describe nonlinear hue differences by attaching a logarithmic curve to the surface of a cone.31

In 1874 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), the founder of experimental psychology, conceives various models based upon complementary colours and the work of Helmholtz. In 1897, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) another psychologist creates a colour model in a tilted double pyramid which attempting to find a balance between Hering and Newton; and Alois Höfler (1834-1918) later strove to improve this model with perceptual data.32

Towards the end of the century are some practical approaches to colour systems. In 1893, Joseph Williams Lovibond (1833-1918) developed the Tintometer, a device for assessing the colour of beer using red, green, and blue subtractive filters (Figure 67). Otto Radde in 1878, publishes a colour scale for printer’s oil inks inspired by Chevreul; Hermann Hoffman produced an atlas of printer’s inks in 1892, in 1896, Robert Steinheil, creates another on different paper types from mixtures of red, yellow, and blue with over prints of varnish and black. In 1899, John Cimon Warburg, produces a colour circle showing the possible mixes of red, yellow, and blue printing inks (Figure 66).33

The Division of Design and Colour is Accepted

McLuhan has warned that “…nobody could discover anything about the nature or effect of print without the careful study of Renaissance painting and new scientific models.”34 The same is true of the reproduction of colour; in this case, the pursuit of repeatable colour verisimilitude. We are now aware of the state of thinking just before the development of the trichromatic printing industry. One enduring principle was that oil painters drew form, rendered tones creating the design of a painting and glazed colour upon that structure; Leonardo’s incomplete Adoration of the Magi, 1481 demonstrates this method (Figure 8). Keyplates as invented by Le Blon and/or Gautier-Dagoty in neutral or analogous colours were commonplace in the print industry, separating the design from the colours. Printers sometimes used overprints in grey or black. By the late nineteenth century mezzotint, stipple engraving and ultimately lithography have made colour reproduction industrialised and commonplace. To achieve automation the human cognitive process must be excluded from the reproduction of colour. Gamble in Penrose

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 66 Annual, 1911 recognises that an incunabula was afoot: “It used to be the fashion to sneer at the process block as cheap and poor in comparison with wood-engraving, and, indeed, there are some now who lament the decay of that old style of pictorial illustration, but the deprecation is a mere sentiment…”35

As seen in the previous chapter, science had agreed upon a way of dealing with the world – namely that nature is separate from humans, and vision is dispositional. As chromolithography achieves greater verisimilitude, equal to that of the oil painters, there is simultaneously a paradigm shift the modelling of colour perception recognises that tone and hue are separate and linked cognitive processes. Colour correction in the emerging process printing is slow, costly, and dependent on the talents of “fine etchers”. Automation will require the measurement of Munsell’s Hue, Value, and Chroma; that is, the creation of a mathematicophysical description with Euclidean or three-dimensional coordinates. The measurement of human colour perception will instigate the creation of colour science. The disegno–colore divide has a biological basis, as Gage points out; vision has “two independent systems of polychromatic and monochromatic receptors”.36 The biological basis is discovered by twentieth-century neurobiology. The following chapter explores the invention of colour science and some recent research that suggests the cognitive basis of the disegno–colore divide. After the exploration of colour science the last chapters show how this science was applied for the pursuit of repeatable colour verisimilitude.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 67 Visual Timeline

Ninth Century

Figure 3: Diamond Sutra: the earliest dated woodblock, 868AD.37

Fifteenth Century

Figure 4: The St Christopher Woodcut: the earliest dated Western print, 1423.38

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 68

Figure 5: Jan van Eyck: The Arnolfini Portrait, oil on oak, 1434. Verisimilitude in the fifteenth century.39

Figure 6: Johann Fust & Peter Schöffer: Solomon, King of Israel, Latin Psalter, 1457.40

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 69

Figure 7: Hand coloured woodcut playing card, 1480.41

Figure 8: Left: Leonardo da Vinci: Adoration of the Magi, 1481. Under-painting reminiscent of print’s black key plate. Right: Filippino Lippi: Adoration of the Magi, 1496. Fifteenth-century verisimilitude.42

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 70

Figure 9: Erhard Ratdolt: Joannis de Sacro Bosco’s Sphaericum opusculum, letterpress and hand coloured, 1485.43

Figure 10: St. Albans Schoolmaster Printer and Dame Juliana Berners: The Boke of Saint Albans, Containing Treatises on Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms, 1486.44

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 71

Figure 11: Erhard Ratdolt: Joannis de Sacro Bosco’s Sphaericum opusculum, printed in multiple colours, 1488.45

Figure 12: Maso Finiguerra: Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels, niello print, 1450-1500.46

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 72 Sixteenth Century

Figure 13: Lucas Cranach: St. Christopher, chiaroscuro woodcut, 1509.47

Figure 14: Hans Burgkmair the Elder Blocks by Jost de Negker, Emperor Maximilian I on Horseback, chiaroscuro woodcut, 1509-1518.48

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 73

Figure 15: Albrecht Altdorfer: Beautiful Virgin of Ratisbon, colour woodcut, 1519-20.49

Figure 16: Sigmund Grimm, Hans Weiditz, and Marx Wirsung: Ludwig Senfl’s Liber selectarum cantionum quas vulgo mutetas appellant sex quinque et quatuor vocum, The Coat-of-Arms of Cardinal Matthäus Lang Von Wellenburg, 1520. Colour woodcut from seven blocks, the tone blocks in red, blue, green, grey, pink and gold.50

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 74

Figure 17: Ugo da Carpi: Parmigianino’s Diogenes, four shades of green, 1524-1527.51

Figure 18: Sigismondo Fanti: Triompho di Fortuna (Triumph of Fortune): Frontispiece (woodcut printed in black and red ink), 1526.52

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Figure 19: Daniel Hopfer, Sultan Soliman III on horseback, etching, 1526-30.53

Figure 20: Federico Barocci: Rest on the Flight into Egypt, oil on canvas, c1570-73.54

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 76 Seventeenth Century

Figure 21: Sigfridus Aronus Forsius: Physica, 1611. Interpretation of classical colour order.55

Figure 22: François d’Aguilon: Opitcorum Libri Sex, 1613. Basic colour scale and mixture diagram.56 Top of the diagram represents tonal mixtures, bottom represents hue mixtures. albvs = white, flavvs = yellow, rvbevs = red, caervlevs = dark blue, niger = black avrevs = golden, pvrpvrevs = purple, viridis =green

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Figure 23: Robert Fludd: Medicina Catholica, 1629.57 Colorum Annulis (Colour Ring), based on Aristote’s scale. niger = black: no light, albus = white: no blackness, flavus = yellow: equal whiteness and redness, croceus = saffron: more redness less whiteness, rubeus = red: intermediate of black and white, viridis = green: equal lightness and blackness, coeruleus = dark blue: less light more blackness

Figure 24: J Baptistam Bidellium: Gaspare Aselli’s De Lactibus sive Lacteis Venis, woodcut, 1627.58

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Figure 25: Hercules Segers: Rocky Landscape, a Church Tower in the Distance, etching and drypoint printed in blue on a pink ground with olive-green wash, c1638.59

Figure 26: Ludwig von Siegen, inventor of mezzotint: Portrait of Amelia Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, 1642.60

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Figure 27: Athanasius Kircher: Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1646.61 albus = white, flavus = yellow, rubeus = red, caeruleus = dark blue, niger = black svbalbvm = whiteness, svbaervlev = dark blue, incarnatvs = flesh-colored, avrevs = golden, pvrpvrevs = purple, svbrvbevs = red tinged cinerevs = grey, viridis = green, fvscvs = brown

Figure 28: Zacharias Traber: Nervus Opticus, 1675.62 albus = white, flavus = yellow, ruber = red, caeruleus = dark blue, niger = black pallidus = pale, violaceus = violet, incarnatus = flesh-colored, aureus = golden, purpureus = purple, cupreus = copper lucido caeruleus = bright blue, viridis = green, fufcus = brown cinereus = gray

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Figure 29: Johannes Zahn: Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium, 1685.63 Pyramis Mystagoga Rerum cum Coloribus Analogiam Exhibens (Mysterious( Pyramid analogy representing the colours of matter) albus = white, flavus = yellow, rubeus = red, caeruleus = dark blue, niger = black Realis = real: subalbus = whiteness, aureus = golden, purpurus = purple, subcaeruleus = light dark blue Intentionalis = intentional: incarnatus = flesh-colored, viridis = green, subrubeus = red tinge, Noationalis = notional: aqueus = aqueous (light blue), fufcus = brown Compositio= composition (mixed): cinereus = gray.

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Figure 30: Frederik Bloemaert: The Drawing Apprentice, title page for the Drawing Book of Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651), chiaroscuro print, c1610-c1690.64

Figure 31: Johannes Teyler: Large Classical Urn, Portrait of Portrait of Adriaen van Stalbemt, from Opus Typochromaticum, hand tinted engraving, late seventeenth century.65

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Figure 32: Isaac Newton: Colour circle with seven primary colours, Opticks, 1704.66 Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet

Eighteenth Century

Figure 33: Anonymous (CB): Traité de la Peinture en Mignature, 1708. Handcoloured, left circle contains two reds because there are no pigments to match Newton’s “simple red.”67

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Figure 34: Jacob Christoph Le Blon: Self Portrait after Van Dyck, mezzotint, three-colour separations, c1738.68

Figure 35 Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty and Joseph Guichard Duverney: Essai d’Anatomie en Tableaux Imprimés, The Flayed Angel, muscles of the back, colour mezzotint, 1746.69

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Figure 36: Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, inventor of aquatint: La Danse Russe, etching and aquatint in sepia, 1769.70

Figure 37: Ignaz Schiffermüller: Versuch eines Farbensystems, 1772.71

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Figure 38: Johann Heinrich Lambert, Farbenpyramide, 1772.72

Figure 39: Moses Harris, The Natural System of Colours, 1772.73

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Figure 40: Edward (Elisha) Kirkall: Noah’s Sacrifice, early 18th century, woodcut printed in yellow and etching with roulette printed in brown.74

Figure 41: Nicolas Le Sueur: Annunciation to the Virgin, 18th century, etched line and chiaroscuro woodcut.75

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Figure 42: John Baptist Jackson: Heroic Landscape, 18th century, chiaroscuro woodcut.76

Figure 43: Francesco Bartolozzi: Lady Smyth and her Children, stipple engraving and etching, 1789.77

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Figure 44: Philibert-Louis Debucourt: Les deux baisers, aquatint, 1786.78

Nineteenth Century

Figure 45: Jean Louis Prevost: Bouquet De Tulipe, Pivoines et D’une Branche De Pommier, from Collection des Fleurs et des Fruits, 1805. Stipple engraving, printed in colour.79

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Figure 46: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Zur Farbenlehre, 1810.80

Figure 47: Philipp Otto Runge: Colour Sphere, 1810. (Clockwise from top left) view from the white pole, view from the black pole, section through the equator, and through grey centre.81

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Figure 48: FC Lewis: The Blue Passion Flower, from Robert Thornton’s The Temple of Flora or Garden of Nature, colour aquatint, engraving, and stipple engraving with hand colouring, 1812.82

Figure 49: Alois Senefelder: Lithographic reproduction of Albrecht Dürer’s marginal decoration in the prayer-book for the Emperor Maximilian, 1819.83

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Figure 50: William Savage, William Marshall Craig (artist), Allen Robert Branston (engraving): Tyger and Landscape, illustration to Practical Hints on Decorative Printing, (1822). Woodcut in thirteen blocks with outline in sepia printing progressively from lightest to deepest tones84

Figure 51: William Blake: Relief etching printed in orange-brown ink and hand-coloured with watercolour and gold, 1825.85

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Figure 52: HA West (artist), Thomas Mann Baynes (engraver), Charles Joseph Hullmandel (printer), Rudolph Ackermann (publisher), Six Views of Gibraltar, coloured lithograph, 1828.86

Figure 53: Thomas Shotter Boys and Joseph Hullmandel: Hôtel de Cluny, crayon lithograph, 1838.87

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Figure 54: Godefroy Engelmann: Left: Title page, and right: Cascade Du Giesbach Album Chromolithographique, 1837.88

Figure 55: Jules Goury (drawings), Owen Jones (publisher), Pascual de Gayangos (Arabic Translations): Divan, Court of the Fish Pond from Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra, 1842.89

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Figure 56: Paul Lacroix (writer), Ferdinand Séré (art direction) and MA Rivaud (illustrations): Le Moyen Âge et la Renaissance, 1848.90 Illustrated with Nineteen Chromolithographic prints by F Kellerhoven and upwards of four hundred engravings on wood.

Figure 57: Owen Jones: The Grammar of Ornament. Illustrated by examples from various styles of ornament. One hundred folio plates, drawn on stone by Francis Bedford, and printed in colours by Day and Son in lithography, 1856.91

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Figure 58: George Baxter: Gems of the Great Exhibition Crystal Palace, mixed printing technique in oil-coloured inks, 1854.92

Figure 59: James Clerk Maxwell: Tartan Ribbon, photograph projected in three colours, 1861.93

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 96

Figure 60: Michel-Eugène Chevreul: The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours and their Applications to the Arts, 1864.94

Figure 61: Thomas Bewick: Young man in foreground in landscape, wood engraving, 1870.95

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Figure 62: Francis Orpen Morris, Alexander Francis Lydon, & Benjamin Fawcett: Guy’s Cliffe, Warwick, Warwickshire; Picturesque Views of Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, wood engraving, 1870.96

Figure 63: William Benson: Manual of the Science of Colour on the True Theory of the Colour-Sensations and the Natural System, 1871.97

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 98

Figure 64:Wilhelm von Bezold: Die Farbenlehre im Hinblick auf Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, 1874.98 Hue aligned to lightness at bass of pyramid.

Figure 65: Édouard Manet and Lemercier & Cie: Polichinelle, colour lithograph on Japan paper, 1874-76.99

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Figure 66: JC Warburg: A New Three Colour Chart, from Penrose Annual, 1899. Printed in Fleming & Company Photochrome Inks.100

Figure 67: Joseph Williams Lovibond: Light and Colour Theories, and their Relation to Light and Colour Standardisation, 1915. Left: Colour theories, Fraunhofer lines (A-H), Rood’s diffraction spectrum curved, Tintometer circle of distinguishable colours, green, orange and violet rays (additive), and red, blue and yellow (subtractive) artist’s triad. Right: Tintometer, instrument for opaque observation.101

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Chapter Three References

1 Tiziano Vecellio, NY Erich Lessing/Art Resource and Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Danaë, Mother of Perseus, 1554, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=%2FThWdC8hIywtPygxFTx5RngoXHsve 10%3D2009. 2 G Vasari and J Foster, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Translated From the Italian of Giorgio Vasari. With Notes and Illustration, Chiefly Selected from Various Commentators (London: Henry G Bohn, 1852) 394. 3 AH Munsell, A Color Notation, 5th ed. (New York: Munsell Color Company, 1919) 33. 4 AH Munsell and AEO Munsell, A Color Notation, 9th ed. (Baltimore, Maryland: Munsell Color Company, 1941). RG Kuehni and A Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) vii. D Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes (Rochester, NY: Digital Publishing Center, 1998) 2. 5 Pliny the Elder, K. Jex-Blake, afterwards Strong Euge nie Sellers and Heinrich Ludwig Urlichs, The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art. [Latin Text and Translation.] Translated by K. Jex-Blake ... With Commentary and Historical Introduction by E. Sellers ... And Additional Notes Contributed by Dr. H. L. Urlichs (London: Macmillan & Company, 1896). J Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993) 29-38. the Elder Pliny, John Bostock and HT Riley, “Artists Who Painted with the Pencil.,” The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 35 (Bohn, 1855). C Hassall. “Oil painting.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T063321. RM Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing in association with Adam Hilger, 1910 & 1983). Vasari and Foster, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects: Translated Form the Italian of Giorgio Vasari. With Notes and Illustration, Chiefly Selected from Various Commentators. 6 EL Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, England ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 15, 29, 165. RA Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color (Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic, 1999) 27. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble. William M Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press; MIT Press, 1969) 29. Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes 6. C De Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London; New York: Phaidon, 2001) 205. B Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2nd ed. ed. (London: Routledge, 2000, 1996) 432. 7 ME Chevreul and F Birren, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the Arts, A newly revised ed. (West Chester, Pennsylvania: Schiffer, 1864 & 1987) 138. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 6, 11. 8 LB Alberti and C Grayson, On Painting and on Sculpture. The Latin Texts of De Pictura and De Statua (London: Phaidon, 1972). M Barasch, Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art (New York: New York University Press, 1978) ix-xviii, 31.

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C Cennini and DV Thompson, The Craftsman’s Handbook: The Italian “Il Libro Dell’ Arte”, Dover Books on Art History (New York: Dover Publications, 1933). Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 118-19. RG Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present (Hoboken, NJ: J Wiley, 2003) 32, 37. 9 Barasch, Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art 51, 59, 100. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 135. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 135. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 33. Barasch, Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art 59. Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color 36. RWG Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour, Wiley-IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology, 6th ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004) 92-94. GG Field, Color and Its Reproduction, 3rd ed. (Pittsburgh, PA: Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, 2004) 29-38. 10 RA Peddie, An Outline of the History of Printing: To which is added the History of Printing in Colours (London: Grafton & Company, 1917) 40. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 14, 20, 31-37. C Franklin and C Franklin, A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint (Oxford: The authors, 1977) 25. J Johnson, Woodcut, Chiaroscuro, 2010, Available: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T092197. Jan Johnson, Ugo Da Carpi, Available: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T014316. Franklin and Franklin, A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint. E Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, The Gottesman Lectures, Uppsala University, (Stockholm,: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960) 5. 11 GP Bellori and H Wohl, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, New translation and critical ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). C Pace, Disegno et Colore, Available: www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T0228792010. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 117, 37-38. F Bernabei, Paolo Pino, 2010, Oxford Art Online, Available: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T067746. Paolo Pino, Dialogo Di Pittura ... Nuovamente Dato in Luce (Vinegia, 1548). Barasch, Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art 95-103, 08. 12 GP Lomazzo, Trattato Dell’arte De la Pittura Di Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Milanese Pittore, Diviso in Sette Libri Ne’quali Si Contiene Tutta la Theorica & la Prattica D’essa Pittura (Milano, 1584). GP Lomazzo, Idea Del Tempio Della Pittura, Di Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo. Nella Quale Egli Discorre Dell’ Origine, et Fondamento Delle Cose Contenute Nel Suo Trattato Dell’ Arte Della Pittura (1538- 1592). J Itten and F Birren, The Elements of Color; a Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten, Based on His Book the Art of Color (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1970) 94. Barasch, Light and Color in the Italian Renaissance Theory of Art 144, 54-60, 63-66, 82-83, Marcel Valotaire, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, 2010, Oxford Art Online, Available: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T051601. F Birren, “Science and Art, Objective and Subjective,” Color Research & Application 10.3 (1985). 13 Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes 10. David Alexander, Mezzotint, 2010, Oxford Art Online, Available: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T057653. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 39-44.

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J Moran, Printing Presses : History and Development from the Fifteenth Century to Modern Times (London: Faber, 1973) 167. Franklin and Franklin, A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint. C Schuckman, “Teyler, Johannes,” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online (2009), http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T084149. Teyler’s assistants: Jan van Call (1689-1748), Pieter Schenck (1660-1713), Gerard Valck (1651/2- 1726) and Mattheus Berckenboom (1667-c1722) 14 R Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours. First Occasionally Written, among Some Other Essays, to a Friend; and Now Suffer’d to Come Abroad as the Beginning of an Experimental History of Colours (For Henry Herringman: London, 1664). Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 136, 52-54, 66-67. Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes 10. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 31, 40-46. 15 AE Shapiro, “Artists’ Colors and Newton’s Colors,” Isis 85.4 (1994). I Newton, “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory About Light and Colors: Sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; in Order to Be Communicated to the Royal Society,” Philosophical Transactions (1665-1678) 6 (1671). J Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999) 136-37. 16 Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours. First Occasionally Written, among Some Other Essays, to a Friend; and Now Suffer’d to Come Abroad as the Beginning of an Experimental History of Colours 221. Shapiro, “Artists’ Colors and Newton’s Colors.” Cornelis D Andriesse, Christiaan Huygens, 2003, Oxford University Press Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t173.e331. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 10, 128-29. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 43-45. Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism 136, 40-41. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 154, 71-72. 17 Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 38, 49-51. H Schenkkan, “Adventures of the First Three-Colour Printer,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited for AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1915). 18 OM Lilien and JC Le Blon, Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1667-1741: Inventor of Three- and Four Colour Printing, Bibliothek des Buchwesens, Bd. 9 (Stuttgart: A Hiersemann, 1985) 30-31. 19 Lilien and Le Blon, Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1667-1741: Inventor of Three- and Four Colour Printing 21-22, 188. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 224. 20 Lilien and Le Blon, Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1667-1741: Inventor of Three- and Four Colour Printing 24, 26, 82, 118, 86. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 154. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 53, 69. C Mortimer, “An Account of Mr James Christopher Le Blon’s Principles of Printing, in Imitation of Painting, and of Weaving Tapestry, in the Same Manner as Brocades,” Philosophical Transactions, 1683-1775 37 (1731): 103.

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Chapter Three References

H Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables (Berlin; London: Springer, 2001) 87. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour. RA Crone, “Licht, Kleur, Ruimte: De Leer Van Het Zien in Historisch Perspectief,” Documenta Ophthalmologica 96 (1999): 98. Franklin and Franklin, A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint 45-48. 21 Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 67-78. Franklin and Franklin, A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint 9-18. John Baptist Jackson, Ugo da Carpi and Albrecht Appendix Durer, An Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro, as Practised by Albert Durer, Hugo Di Carpi, &c. And the Application of It to the Making Paper Hangings of Taste, Duration, and Elegance ... Illustrated with Prints in Proper Colours (London: A. Millar, 1754). Other Chiaroscuro printers: CWE Dietrich (1712 -1774) , Jean-Michel Papillon (1698-1776), John Skippe (1741-1812). 22 Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes 12. Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables 93. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 87-89. 23 Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 89. 24 Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 47, 50-53, 58-61, 63-64, 72-74, 109-10. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 233. Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism 141. Harris and Birren, The Natural System of Colours. WSpillmann, “Moses Harris’s the Natural System of Colours and Its Later Representation,” Color Research & Application 29 (2004). F Schmid, “The Color Circles by Moses Harris,” The Art Bulletin 30.3 (1948). E König and EJ Wall, Natural-Color Photography ... Translated from the German, with Additions, Original Tests and Experiments, etc., by EJ Wall, Frps ... With Color-Chart, Test-Results, and Diagrams (pp. 94. Dawbarn & Ward: London, 1906). G Palmer, “Theory of Colours and Vision,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry-Fundamentals SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. David L MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1777 & 1993). PD Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1981) 16-18. 25 “Aquatint,” Philip’s World Encyclopedia (2008) http://www.oxfordreference.com/ views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t142.e580. Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes 14, 20. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 98-105, 12. Thornton, New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnaeus: Comprehending an Elucidation of the Several Parts of the Fructification; a Prize Dissertation on the Sexes of Plants (by C. Von Linnæus); a Full Explanation of the Classes, and Orders, of the Sexual System; and the Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature, Being Picturesque, Botanical, Coloured Plates, of Select Plants, Illustrative of the Same, with Descriptions. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 108. C Campbell, Thomas Bewick, 2010, Oxford Art Online, Available: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T008554. Other acquatintists: Johann Gottlieb Prestel (1739-1800) Antonio Rancati Andrea Scacciati (1725-71), Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727-1785), Philibert-Louis Deboucourt (1755-1832), Pierre-Michel Alix (1752-1817), Jean-François Janinet (1752-1814), Charles M Descourtis (1753-1820).

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Chapter Three References

26 W Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink; Both Black and Coloured (London, 1832) 170. W Savage, Practical Hints on Decorative Printing. With Illustrations Engraved on Wood and Printed in Colours at the Type Press. (London, 1822). W Savage, A Dictionary of the Art of Printing (London, 1841), EI Carlyle, Savage, William (1770–1843), Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24731. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 118-19, 24-30, 41-42, 46. Pankow, Tempting the Palette: A Survey of Color Printing Processes 20. EK Scott, “George Baxter: Pioneer Colour Printer,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930) 73-175. CT Lewis, George Baxter (Colour Printer) His Life and Work: A Manual for Collectors (Sampson Low, Marston, 1908) 36, 38. JM Friedman and Yale Center for British Art, Color Printing in England, 1486-1870 : An Exhibition, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 20 April to 25 June, 1978 (New Haven: The Center, 1978) 19. A Dawson, “What Can We Learn from Baxter?,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. W Gamble, vol. XX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited for AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1915) 130-32. Moran, Printing Presses : History and Development from the Fifteenth Century to Modern Times 164. R Mitchell, Knight, Charles (1791–1873), 2004, Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/157162006. 27 A Senefelder and JW Muller, The Invention of Lithography (New York: The Fuchs & Lang Manufacturing Company, 1911) 6-8. Senefelder and National Gallery of Australia, Copy after Albrecht Durer of Marginal Decoration to the Prayer-Book of the Archduke of Bavaria. M Twyman, Hullmandel, Charles Joseph (1789–1850), 2004, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14113 M Twyman, Lithography, 1800-1850: The Techniques of Drawing on Stone in England and France and Their Application in Works of Topography (London New York: Oxford U.P., 1970) 16, 118-26. J Ford, Ackermann, Rudolph, 2006, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/59. TS Boys, Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, etc (London: Thomas Shotter Boys, 1839). 28 Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 88, 179, 84, 97, 201, 07. Goury, Jones and Gayangos, Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra. O Jones, F Bedford and MD Wyatt, The Grammar of Ornament. Illustrated by Examples from Various Styles of Ornament. One Hundred Folio Plates, Drawn on Stone by Francis Bedford, and Printed in Colours by Day and Son. Essays on the Ornament of the Renaissance and the Italian Periods by Md Wyatt (London: Bernard Quartich, 1856). AR de Charleville, CJ Hullmandel and Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées (France), A Manual of Lithography; or, Memoir on the Lithographical Experiments Made in Paris, at the Royal School of the Roads and Bridges: Clearly Explaining the Whole Art, as Well as All the Accidents That May Happen in Printing, and the Different Methods of Avoiding Them, 2d ed. (London: Rodwell and Martin, 1821). Twyman, Lithography, 1800-1850: The Techniques of Drawing on Stone in England and France and Their Application in Works of Topography 160-61.

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JH Rosen, “Lemercier et Compagnie: Photolithography and the Industrialization of Print Production in France 1837-1859,” Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1988, 6, 122, 237. Deposition de Monsieur Lemercier, “Commision D’enquëte sur la Situation des Ouvriers et des Industries D’Art,” Ministère de l’instruction Publique et des Beaux-arts, Direction des Beaux-arts, Bureau de L’Ensignement (Paris: A Quantin 1884), vol., 177-81. PL Jacob (writer), Ferdinand Séré (art direction) and MA Rivaud (illustrations), Le Moyen Äge et la Renaissance, Histoire et Description des Moeurs et Usages Du Commerce et De L’industrie, des Sciences, des Arts, des Littératures et des Beaux-Arts, en Europe. 29 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 70, 78-80, 82-83, 84. Chevreul and Birren, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the Arts. 30 JC Maxwell, “On the Theory of Compound Colours, and the Relations of the Colours of the Spectrum,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 150 (1860). JC Maxwell, “Theory of the Perception of Colours,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry- Fundamentals, SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. David L MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1856 & 1993). Maxwell and University of California, Tartan Ribbon. T Young, “The Bakerian Lecture: On the Theory of Light and Colours,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 92 (1802). Newton, Opticks, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light Microform. 31 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 232-33, 37, 52, 190. 32 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 101-02, 234-35. 33 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 87, 192-94, 234-35. Warburg, “A New Three Colour Chart.” 34 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962) 145. 35 William Gamble, “The Year’s Progress in Process, 1911-12,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVII (London: AW Penrose and Company Limited, 1911-12) 1. 36 Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 117. 37 The British Library Board, Diamond Sutra 868, British Library, Available: www.imagesonline.bl.uk. 38 St. Christopher, 1423, ARTstor, The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol. 164, German Single-Leaf Woodcuts before 1500, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8zJTcjI2ISNZLSo6eT0%3D 39 Jan van Eyck, NY Erich Lessing/Art Resource and London National Gallery, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=%2FThWdC8hIywtPygxFTx5TnQkVn0nc w%3D%3D2011. 40 Johannes Fust, Peter Schöffer, San Diego University of California and British Museum, Solomon, King of Israel, Latin Psalter: Detail: Initial B from First Page, Mainz London. 41 Cincinnati Art Museum and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Playing Card, 1480, Hand- colored woodblock print, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1OdjArJCxdLS04ejV2SHEqWA%3D %3D.

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42 Leonardo, Galleria delgi Uffizi and Florence/Art Resource SCALA, NY,, Adoration of the Magi, 1481, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=4iFCeTg4NCciJy8laCt2KngqVXYseF94fg%3 D%3D 2007. Filippino Lippi, Galleria degli Uffizi and Florence/Art Resource SCALA, NY,, Adoration of the Magi, 1496, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=4iFCeTg4NCciJy8laCt2KngqVXQnfVJ9eg%3 D%3D2011. 43 Joannis de Sacro Bosco, Sphaericum Opusculum, 1485, Available: http://lib.tudelft.nl/ws/services/specialcollections/highlights/incunables/index.htm. 44 Dame Juliana Berners and Schoolmaster Printer, The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms, St Albans. 45 Christies Books & Manuscripts, Sacrobosco, Johannes De (D. 1256 [1244?]). Sphaera Mundi. - Georgius Peurbachius (1423-1461). Theoricae Novae Planetarum. - Regiomontanus. Disputationes Contra Cremonensia. Venice: Johannes Lucilius Santritter and Hieronymus De Sanctis, Chrisites, Available: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=4890554&sid= 12b3d6da-c0c3-4a27-9e5d-02ab91216a2f2010. 46 M Finiguerra and The Trustees of the British Museum, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels, 1450-1500, Available: www.britishmuseum.org. 47 L Cranach and San Diego University of California, St Christopher, c1509, Chiaroscuro woodblock, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3grf1t8eCo% 3D. 48 H Burgkmair the Elder, J de Negker and The Trustees of the British Museum, Emperor Maximilian I on Horseback; in Profile to Left, in Armour with Peacock Feathers. In Front of a Portico with a Banner Carrying the Imperial Arms, 1509-1518, Available: www.britishmuseum.org. 49 A Altdorfer, Graphische Sammlung Albertina and San Diego University of California, Beautiful Virgin of Ratisbon, 1519-20, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3grflZzdy8% 3D 50 S Grimm, H Weiditz, M Wirsung and The Trustees of the British Museum, Illustration to Ludwig Senfl, Liber Selectarum Cantionum Quas Vulgo Mutetas Appellant Sex Quinque et Quatuor Vocum, 1520, Available: www.britishmuseum.org/. 51 Parmigianino, Ugo da Carpi and The Cleveland Museum of Art, Diogenes, 1524-1527, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=%2FDFMaiMuOztdLS04ejp5SXYpWQ%3D% 3D 52 S Fanti and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Triumph of Fortune, Frontispiece, 1526, Available: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/25.7. 53 D Hopfer, Sultan Soliman, 1520, ARTstor, The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol. 17, Early German Masters: Hans Brosamer, the Hopfers, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8zJTcjI2ISNfKyw8ezp7. 54 Federico Barocci, Pinacoteca Vaticana and Florence/Art Resource SCALA, NY, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c1570-73, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=4iFCeTg4NCciJy8laCt2KngqVXQnfVJ9fw%3 D%3D. 55 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 46. 56 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 41-42. 57 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 42-43.

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Chapter Three References

58 G Aselli and JB Bidellium, De Lactibus Sive Lacteis Venis, 1627, Available: http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/anatomia/viscera/aselli.html. 59 H Segers and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Rocky Landscape, a Church Tower in the Distance, 1630, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2NzkvKzU7alN7R3IiXXkueg%3 D%3D. 60 L von Siegen and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Amelia Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse- Kassel, 1642, Available: www.metmuseum.org. 61 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 41-42. 62 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 42-43. 63 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 43-45. J Zahn, Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium: Ex Abditis Rerum Naturalium Et Artificalium Principiis Protractum Nova Methodo, Eaque Solida Explicatum Ac Comprimis E Triplici Fundamento Physico Seu Naturali, Mathematico Dioptrico Et Mechanico, Seu Practico Stabilitum, Editio secunda auctior, 1702, Lochneri, Available: http://echo.mpiwg- berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuViewfull?url=/mpiwg/online/permanent/library/EMMTUSN3/pageimg &start=151&viewMode=images&pn=157&mode=imagepath2012. 64 F Bloemaert and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Drawing Apprentice. Title Page for the Drawing Book of Abraham Bloemaert, c1610-c1690, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2JiY8PTcuaDJ3TmM5U2lFfF53d Cs4ZTQ%3D. 65 J Teyler, “Larger Classical Urn,” A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint, eds. Colin Franklin and Charlotte Franklin (Oxford: The authors, 1977). RM Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers ... With a Chapter on Modern Processes by W Gamble [with Illustrations.] (London: Sir I Pitman & Sons, 1910). 66 I Newton, Opticks, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light Microform, 4 ed. (London: Prometheus Books, 1730) 155. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 128. 67 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 341. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction 171. 68 Franklin and Franklin, A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing from Chiaroscuro to Aquatint. 69 J-F Gautier-Dagoty, JG Duverney and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Essai D’anatomie en Tableaux Imprimés, 1745, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2JSwyKSM%2FejRmXHghQRcq flZ8ciQ1bw%3D%3D. 70 J-B Le Prince and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, La Danse Russe, 1769, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2ODA0KyYrZD5%2FXnVHXno gd1t%2BfS0%3D. 71 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 59. Ignaz Schiffermueller, Versuch Eines Farbensystems (Wien, 1772). 72 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 344. 73 M Harris and F Birren, The Natural System of Colours, ed. Faber Birren (New York: Privately printed; distributed by the Whitney Library of Design, 1963). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 61.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 108

Chapter Three References

74 E Kirkall and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Noah’s Sacrifice, 18th century, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2JiY8PTcuaDJ3TmM5U2lFfF53d CA3bDA%3D. 75 N Le Sueur, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and State Art Museum of Florida, Annunciation to the Virgin, 18th century, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJbczwtLzM6Kj08ZjNiKngqXXsof11% 2Feyw%3D, Le Sueur, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and State Art Museum of Florida, Annunciation to the Virgin. 76 JB Jackson and San Diego University of California, Heroic Landscape, 18th century, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gve1lye Cw%3D. 77 F Bartolozzi and The Cleveland Museum of Art, Lady Smith and Her Children, 1789 1789, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2NjsgQi85fzN6SHQn. 78 P-Louis Debucourt and Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Les Deux Baisers, 1786, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2Njs%2BPzcuFTx5TnArWHUi. 79 JL Prevost and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Bouquet De Tulipe, Pivoines et D’une Branche De Pommier, from Collection des Fleurs et des Fruits, 1805, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2ODA0KyYrZD5%2FXnVHXno gd1t9fSQ%3D. 80 JW von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre (2 Bde. Tübingen, 1810). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 62. 81 A Schopenhauer, G Stahl and PO Runge, On Vision and Colors Color Sphere, 1st ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) 132. 82 RJ Thornton, New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnaeus: Comprehending an Elucidation of the Several Parts of the Fructification; a Prize Dissertation on the Sexes of Plants (by C. Von Linnæus); a Full Explanation of the Classes, and Orders, of the Sexual System; and the Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature, Being Picturesque, Botanical, Coloured Plates, of Select Plants, Illustrative of the Same, with Descriptions (London, 1799). Caldwall, Robert John Thornton and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Temple of Flora: Or, Garden of Nature, 1812, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2JiY8PTcuaDJ3TmM5U2lFfF53d CYyaD8%3D. 83 A Senefelder and National Gallery of Australia, Copy after Albrecht Durer of Marginal Decoration to the Prayer-Book of the Archduke of Bavaria, 1819, Available: http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?View=LRG&IRN=50639. 84 W Savage, W Marshall Craig (artist), AR Branston (Engraver) and The Trustees of the British Museum, Tyger and Landscape, 1822, Available: http://www.britishmuseum.org. 85 W Blake and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: The Blossom: Merry Merry Sparrow, 1825, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=%2FDFMaiMuOztdLS04ejp5SXYoWA% 3D%3D. 86 HA West, TM Baynes, CJ Hullmandel, R Ackermann and Greenwich National Maritime Museum, Six Views of Gibraltar from Drawings by Ha West., 1826, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. All rights reserved,, Available: www.nmmimages.com 2009. 87 TS Boys and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Hôtel De Cluny, 1839, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2NzkvKzU7alN7R3IlWnwofA%3 D%3D.

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88 G Engelmann and The Trustees of the British Museum, Title Page, Album Chromolithographique, 1837, British Museum, Available: www.britishmuseum.org, January 8 2012. G Engelmann and The Trustees of the British Museum, Cascade Du Giesbach, Album Chromolithographique, 1837, British Museum, Available: www.britishmuseum.org,. 89 J Goury, O Jones and P de Gayangos, Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra, 2 vols. (London: O. Jones, 1842) 91. 90 PL Jacob (writer), Ferdinand Séré (art direction) and MA Rivaud (illustrations), Le Moyen Äge et la Renaissance, Histoire et Description des Moeurs et Usages Du Commerce et De L’industrie, des Sciences, des Arts, des Littératures et des Beaux-Arts, en Europe., 5 vols. (Paris: 1848) vol. 2. 91 Owen Jones and Minneapolis College of Art and Design Collection, The Grammar of Ornament, Pl X Egyptian No 7: 1-5 from Mummy Cases in the Louvre; 6, 7 from Tombs at Thebes; 8, 9 from a Mummy Case; 10-24 from Ceilings of Tombs in Various Parts of Egypt, 1856, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1OdjArJCxdLS04eTx5RnwtWA%3D% 3D. 92 G Baxter and Minneapolis College of Art and Design Collection, Gems of the Great Exhibition: Crystal Palace (Great Exhibition Hall), Exterior View, 1854, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1OdjArJCxdLS04ejV2R3YoVQ%3D% 3D. 93 JC Maxwell and San Diego University of California, Tartan Ribbon, 1861, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gpflV3e SA%3D. 94 Chevreul and Birren, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Applications to the Arts 25, 28, 73, 166. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 85. 95 T Bewick and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Young Man in Foreground in Landscape, 1870, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2JiY8PTcuaDJ3TmM5U2lFfF53d CI%2FYjc%3D. 96 FO Morris, Guy’s Cliffe, Warwick, Warwickshire, England, Picturesque Views of Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, 1870, Available: http://fromoldbooks.org/r/X/pages/053-Guys-Cliffe/2009. 97 WA Benson, Manual of the Science of Colour on the True Theory of the Colour-Sensations and the Natural System. With ... Illustrations (London: Chapman & Hall, 1871). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 254. 98 JFW von Bezold, Die Farbenlehre Im Hinblick Auf Kunst Und Kunstgewerbe ... Mit ... 9 Tafeln (Braunschweig, 1874). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 233-34. 99 É Manet, Lemercier & Cie and The Trustees of the British Museum, Polichinelle, 1874-1876, Available: www.britishmuseum.org. 100 JC Warburg, “A New Three Colour Chart,” Penrose Annual: International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble (London: Northwood, 1899). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 194. 101 JW Lovibond, Light and Colour Theories, and Their Relation to Light and Colour Standardization ... Illustrated by 11 Plates Coloured by Hand (pp. xii. 90. E. & F. N. Spon: London, 1915) i & facing 40.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 110 Figure 1: Thomas Young, Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts. Plate. XXIX, Fig. 427. A triangular figure exhibiting in theory all possible shades of colours. The red, the green, and the violet, are single at their respective angles, and are gradually shaded off towards the opposite sides. The centre is grey, and the lights of any two colours, which are found at equal distances on opposite sides of it, would always very nearly make up together white light, as yellow and violet, greenish blue and red, or blue and orange.1

4. Science and Colour

The fact that red, yellow, and blue cannot be primary colours has been mentioned, as even now it is sometimes taught that they are so. As long as the theory of colour principally lay with artists there was reasonable ground for their assumption, since they worked with impure colours, viz. those of pigments… When, however, the question was taken up by the physicist with more exact methods of experimenting, and with pure colours, the falsity of the old triad was soon capable of proof. – William de Wiveleslie Abney, Colour Measurement and Mixture, 18912

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Introduction

Roger Bacon’s aim was to create science by the unification of optics and all other knowledge, as Francis Bacon intended by his use of machines, and Boyle by his authentic testimony. Optics, machines, and authentic testimony are the actor–actants in the creation of colour science. Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) defined normal science or paradigms as research that bases itself on scientific achievements that are unprecedented but sufficiently open-ended to allow growth. He describes: “Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.” In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962 he claims that before Newton’s Opticks there were individual scientists of optics; after Opticks, there was optical science.3

Prior to the Cambridge meeting in 1931 of the Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage (CIE), scientists and laboratories pursued individual procedures of colour measurement. After CIE1931 colour science was a mature science, with a shared paradigm, and a consensus that was ready to create a research tradition. The tumult of research papers on colour published online in 2011 suggests that colour science is a success. Early in the nineteenth century two ideas persisted that would initiate this science. The first was dispositionalism as expounded by Newton in 1730: “For the rays to speak are not coloured. In them, there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour.” The second was a general acceptance of the artist’s triad. Runge wrote in 1810: “There are five elements: white, black, blue, yellow and red. Apart from these, it is impossible to imagine a totally unmixed colourant.”4

Artists and designers are not scientists; to generalise, they hold the view that to overturn a prevailing paradigm is to uphold the greater good. Our education teaches us to subscribe to the myth of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. This was a flash-in-the-pan art movement that was the culmination of a paradigm of verisimilitude that lasted for centuries. Print craftsmen, by contrast, often adhere to tried and true methods at the expense of scientific advancement, or they dispense with craftsmanship in exchange for new products of science. This chapter discusses the standardisation of colour science. The analogy here to the standardisation of Latin is deliberate; the aim is to show that a “paradigm shift” requires paradigm creation. The following is an attempt to outline the colour science paradigm that is most relevant to graphic artists.

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Fixation of Trichromatic Theory

Figure 2: Electromagnetic transverse wave.5

Figure 3: Hermann von Helmholtz: Physiological Optics, 1866. Spectral colour-sensitivity curves.6

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 113

Figure 4: Additive (projected light) and subtractive (filtered light) mixing.

Figure 5: James Clerk Maxwell holding his top, 1855.7

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Figure 6: James Clerk Maxwell: The Diagram of Colours, 1857.8

Figure 7: James Clerk Maxwell, On the Theory of Compound Colours, and the Relations of the Colours of the Spectrum, 1860. Fig 1-3: Spectrometer. Fig 4-5: Some colours exist outside the triangle defined by three lights. Fig 6-7: Response curves of observers K and J.9

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 115

Figure 8: Metameric matches in Adobe Photoshop CS5.1: Left: The white, grey and black eyedropper in Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 are equivalent to the three colours on the outer ring of Maxwell’s top. Right: In Photoshop greys are balanced by adjusting the brightness of the red, green, and blue channels, as Helmholtz demonstrated. In the example the dull background is adjusted to white. When grey is corrected all colours in an image are also corrected.

Young’s 1802 paper to the Royal Society had advanced Aristotle’s transparent medium only a little; he proposed that light travelled in waves through a luminous ether, ultimately vibrating the retina to induce colour vision. Despite Newton’s unflinching adherence to a corpuscular description of light, Young did not hold back from editing the Opticks to present a wave theory. He calculated the wavelengths of colours and surmised that there was an infinite number of waves. Under the influence of lectures about Mayer’s colour theory, he proposed the eye’s sensitive filament has a three-part division for red, yellow, and blue, arguing that the optic nerve could not transport information from a retina for each wavelength. Young attempted to describe his theory of three-colour mixture in his Course of Lectures with a mixture triangle (Figure 1). Wünsch’s observations and William Hyde Wollaston’s (1766-1828) experiments with spectral dispersion led him to change his principal colours to red, green and violet. Albeit that wave theory as proposed by Huygens was two hundred years old, he was criticised by the atomists (Newtonians). Later Augustin Jean Fresnel’s (1788-1827) interference experiments proved wave theory correct by demonstrating that light had transverse waves (Figure 2).10

David Brewster (1781-1868) was famous for his refraction, reflection, polarisation experiments, and for the invention of the kaleidoscope and the lenticular stereoscope. Noting that coloured filters could not produce monochromatic light, he concluded like Palmer and Wünsch that light consisted of three colours of equal refraction with white existing in all parts of the spectrum. A refutation of Newton, it was briefly accepted

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owing to his scientific authority; however, it inspired much research and repetition of his experiments. Josef Maria Eder in Handbuch der Photographie, 1884 remarked that: “…printers accepted Brewster’s colours in practice, because in the present state of colour ink manufacture only yellow, red, and blue produce suitable mixtures, especially in the yellow shades.” Blue, red, and yellow became fixed terms in the printing industry, referring to cyan, magenta, and yellow inks.11

Helmholtz repeated Brewster’s experiments and demonstrated that internal reflections within the prism led to “Brewster’s white”. Repeating Newton’s dual prism experiments, he isolated colours, mixed them individually, and showed Newton to be correct.12 His further enquiries demonstrated that red and green mix to yellow, and blue and yellow to white. The logical consequence of this is that red, blue and green light mixes to white (Table 1).13 After centuries of confusion, he provided the first explanation of additive mixing or the adding of spectral energy, and distinguished it from subtractive mixtures or energy absorption by pigments (Figure 4). Helmholtz came to understand that the photopigments of the retina (Young’s sensitive filaments) have overlapping spectral sensitivities (Figure 3). The additive–subtractive principle is not naturally intuitive; David Burton in Applying Color, 1984 discusses infant education and states: “Teachers should introduce the additive and subtractive colour systems at about the same time as the triadic system. Children then gain an immediate basis for comparison of different uses of the three systems.”14 In a demonstration of this issue Dr Karl on the BBC received a call from an Andrew who been observing disco lights. Noting – contrary to accepted theory – that blue and yellow light mixed to green, he created a dilemma for Dr Karl. The issue is in the nomenclature: what is meant by yellow, blue, green? Because of this, Dr Karl got in a muddle and erroneously took a physicalist position:

Caller Andrew: You mentioned RGB; red, green and blue? So where does yellow come into this? Is yellow not a primary colour?

Dr Karl: Yellow is a primary colour, for dyes, it is not a primary colour for lights. Look I am suspecting we have got 440 nanometers of blue going onto the wall and a 535 of yellow, so we have got a blue and a yellow. What is coming back at me off the wall? Is it a frequency that is half way between them? … Have I got some sort of frequency doubling? Is it actually happening at the wall or is it happening in my brain?15

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Violet Blue Green Yellow Red Red Purple Rose DULL YELLOW Orange Red Yellow Rose WHITE Yellow-Green Yellow Green Pale blue Blue-green Green Blue Indigo Blue Violet Violet

Table 1: Helmholtz and Southall: Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics. Additive hue mixing table, the mixture of blue and yellow to white, and green and red to yellow, is counterintuitive.16

Hermann Gunter Grassmann (1809-1877), a philologist and mathematician realised that language contained only three categories for colour: brightness, hue, and saturation (with many terms for level of saturation). “Every impression of colour may be analysed into three mathematically determinable elements, the hue, the brightness of the colour, and the brightness of the intermixed white.” Using vector mathematics that evolved from Euclid’s geometry he aimed to formalise Newton’s colour circle. This approach is still utilised in the CIE colour space – Δe in fact describes the accuracy of a colour match within Euclidean space. He provided a formal definition of complementary colours: “To every colour belongs another homogeneous colour, which, when mixed with it, gives colourless light.” This inspired Helmholtz, who plotted seven colours and their complements, noting that various colours required differing intensities of brightness to neutralise each other. Both men observed that some colours have complements that are nonspectral: green’s complement is purple. In three-colour reproduction, cyan ink reflects green and blue; yellow ink reflects red and green; and magenta ink reflects red and blue, and thus is non-spectral and subjective (Figure 4). In my experience of four-colour reproduction magenta is a troublesome colour due to its subjectivity. It is possible to calculate the reflectances of ideal printing colours; nevertheless, inks of balanced reflectivity do not exist.17 Kippham notes:

The colorimetric properties of the ink utilized and of the substrate have a considerable influence on the reproducible color gamut. For example, it is of importance what magenta pigment is used in the ink. The relatively expensive rhodamin magenta extends the color space, especially in the blue and purple range.18

In the tradition of Ptolemy, Maxwell investigated optical colour mixing with a spinning top; as Grassmann to strove to represent, hue, lightness, and saturation graphically, he sought to do the same for mixture. His top had two adjustable rings, the inner one being

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black and white, and the outer three-coloured: vermilion, ultramarine, and emerald green. He adjusted the colour sectors for a grey match with the black and white sectors; for example: 0.33R+0.33B3+0.33G = 0.5B+0.5W (Figure 5). Known as a metameric match, it is the principle behind three- and four-colour printing and photography (Figure 8). Later Maxwell using his “colour box”, made detailed measurements of his own responses and those of observer K (his wife) to mixtures from three coloured lights. He plotted wavelengths as luminosity curves within a triangle bounded by Newton’s circle (Figure 6). Unable to match highly saturated colours with three lights, he desaturated them with white light, plotting them outside the triangle but within the circle. These are hues that are not mixable from three monochromatic lights (Figure 7). Mixtures from three lights remained a difficult issue for CIE1931 and remain so for colour matching between devices today. Maxwell’s genius devised a method to measure colour perception, and not stopping there he demonstrated the actuality of trichromatic theory by producing the first three-colour photograph, with the help of photographer Thomas Sutton (1819-1875) in 1861 (Figure 59, Chapter 3).19 He describes his method:

Let a plate of red glass be placed before the camera, and an impression taken … Let it now be put in an optical projector, along with the red glass; a red picture will be thrown on the screen. Let this operation be repeated with a green and violet glass, and, by means of three optical projectors, let the three images be superimposed on the screen.20

The Young, Grassmann, Helmholtz, and Maxwell approach provided a rational description of colour that demonstrated that wavelength was not a predictor of colour. Maxwell’s colour photograph marks the beginning of the modern era of colour reproduction; however, it was not a matter of merely purchasing a few coloured filters. Martin Cohn in Three-Color Process: its History and Adaptability to Printing Methods, 1896 says: “For experimenting in three-color process three things are absolutely necessary: money, patience, and scientific knowledge.”21 In 1910, Gamble describes the impact of Maxwell’s work:

Almost as soon as photography was invented, the idea was conceived of making it the means of reproducing natural colours. For a long time it was the dream of the early experimenters that some means would be found of permanently recording colours seen on the focussing glass of the camera, but it was not until 1861, when J. Clark Maxwell, in a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, suggested a theory of a three-colour system, that the investigation of the subject began to proceed on any well defined lines.22

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Standardising Colour Measurement

Figure 9: Albert Henry Munsell: A Color Notation, 1919. A balanced coloured sphere, pastel sketch.23

Figure 10: Mark Fairchild: Several editions of the Munsell Book of Color, the Color Atlas of the Munsell Color System sold by the Munsell Color Company, perched behind several of the book’s removable pages of color swatches.24

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Figure 11: Colour-mixture curves for extreme spectrum red, extreme spectrum violet and 505nm spectrum primaries, derived by E Schrödinger from curves published by A König and C Dieterici.25

Figure 12: CIE1931 chromaticity diagram. The outer boundary is the spectral or monochromatic locus. Wavelengths are in nanometers.26

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Figure 13: Hans Neugebauer: Colour model derivable from theoretically correct printing inks 1937.27

Figure 14: The location of the chromaticity plane in XYZ space. Two sequential projections are required to project the points in this space to the chromaticity plane. The first is a central projection of points (X, Y, Z ) from the origin to the Maxwell triangle. The second is a projection of the points of the first projection parallel to the Z axis and onto the XY plane, now called by convention the xy plane.28

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Figure 15: Deane Brewster Judd’s version of the CIE chromaticity diagram, 1932. Straight lines represent dominant wavelength, they imply red/green and yellow/blue opponency, the concentric lines imply colorimetric purity.29

Figure 16: Deane Brewster Judd’s uniform chromacity diagram plotted on to the Maxwell triangle, 1934.30

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Figure 17: Deane Brewster Judd’s perceptibility scales for CIE1931. Circles are enlarged 100 times. The circles represent areas of just noticeable differences. That is, most viewers see the colour within the circles as the same hue. Note again that the alignment of the ellipses implies perceptual opponency.31

Figure 18: David L MacAdam: Diagram representing the maximum luminosity for a hue with a specific lighting source, in this case illuminant C, 1944.32

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Figure 19: David L MacAdam: Diagram for standard deviations of visual matches. The circles are enlarged ten times. Note again that the alignment of the circles implies opponency, 1944.33

Figure 20: Graphic representation of CIELAB or CIELUV colour space with red–green, yellow–blue, and lightness–darkness opponency.

In the late nineteenth century, scientists Arthur Peter König (1856-1901), Johannes Adolf von Kries (1853-1928), George Elias Müller (1850-1934), Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) and William de Wiveleslie Abney (1843-1920) all sought to define methods of colour measurement. This was only achieved at the 1931 meeting of the CIE, when colour perception was transformed from the subjective to the objective through

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standardisation, fixation, repeatability and later mechanisation. The almost McLuhanesque one-sensedness of science is neatly described by Ivins:

One of the most interesting things in our modern scientific practice has been the invention and perfection of methods by which the scientists can acquire much of their basic data through one and the same sensuous channel of awareness. I understand that in physics, for example, the scientists are happiest when they can get their data with the aid of some dial or other device which can be read by vision.34

Sean Johnston in A History of Light and Colour Measurement, 2001 asserts that due to the vagaries of human vision, scientists exploring light and colour aspired to eliminate the human element from measurement. Nineteenth-century light measurement focused on “physical power rather than perceived intensity”, as the eye was an “unreliable detector”. Scientists aspired to eyes becoming superseded by photographic plates or photoelectric cells; in spite of this, these detectors proved problematic as they did not perceive light like a human eye. A work-around involved standardising and automating observer viewing conditions; this provided “repeatability of between 0.1% and 1%” and “…went far towards legitimatising the subject.” The “average observer” developed out of statistical analysis that normalised the distribution of human responses. In the 1920s an impetus for research came from lighting engineers who needed accurate measurements of gas, carbon filament, and electric lamps. In time, light detectors improved but colour remained recalcitrant. Johnston remarks that colour: “…could not easily be accommodated in a physical view of light.”35

The first international body for light measurement, the Commission Internationale de Photométrie (CIP), was formed after a Paris gas congress in 1900. By 1911, this body included electrical lighting and an international commission of illumination was proposed: the Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage of 1913. CIE’s first colour quandary was to decide between an objective definition of light intensity and an observer-based subjective one. The various national laboratories used lights of differing spectral characteristics; for a photometric standard, a standard set of filters was required. Dr LT Troland, Harvard lecturer, psychologist, and research director of Technicolor, was the driving force behind standardisation. The issue at the1921 meeting, notes Johnston, was: “Could a workable system of light measurement be constructed by treating colour as a purely physical phenomenon, or must the observer be an intrinsic part of the system?” The colour committee members were primarily physicists and they opted to exclude physiology and psychology from the colour definition. Colorimetry became distinguished from photometry, and the basic concepts for colour researchers became hue, saturation,

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and brilliance. American standards committees had two colorimetric aims: the “…designation of those properties of objects and radiation which determine colour perception…” and that “…observers should be tested as average and normal”. CIE1924 adopted the visibility curves of the American National Bureau of Standards (NBS), which were averaged from König and Abney’s response curves (Figure 11).36

At CIE1931, John Guild (1890-1979) from England’s National Physical Laboratory presented his “normal observer”, which amalgamated his data with that of William David Wright (1906-1997). He gave colour perception a mathematicophysical definition that included: three primary lights defined by liquid filters, standardised colour temperatures for tungsten lamps, numerical values for a normal observer, and a mathematical relationship between the elements. This method favoured three-colour matching over are other techniques, for example, “monochromatic-plus-white”. American and English techniques dominated the 1931 meeting as other countries were still reconstructing after World War I. Guild’s physicalist approach won the day for descriptions of white, illuminants, trichromatic coordinates, and filters were well defined and easily understood (Figure 12). Johnston remarks that:37

Only the highly artificial ‘standard observer’– a table of numbers representing the response of a typical eye to three reference colours – related this physical approach to visual perception. The acrimony in the subject through the remainder of the decade related to the restrictive physical definition of the subject.38

This was the era of Gestalt psychology: researchers such as David Katz in The World of Colour, 1935 examined colour perception in its surrounds, and generated different views: “Colour-phenomena are always characterised by objectification; they are always seen ‘out there’ in space.” Psychologists objected to the committee’s narrow definition as it made phenomena such as surface texture, background interference, and illumination level difficult to examine; contrastingly, industrialists and physicists saw such inclusions as troublesome; all concurred on standard viewing conditions. David L MacAdam’s (1910-1998) recommendation to adopt the term “psychophysical”, from the research of physiologists Wundt and Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) was very popular with the German members. The CIE1931 model has one standout characteristic over all previous definitions: it was practical, and it was utilised. Herbert Eugene Ives (1882-1953) from Bell Telephone and Henry Phelps Gage (1886-1955) from Corning Glass Works both adopted it. By the CIE1935 meeting limits for coloured signal lights were defined with the Wright–Guild data.39

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As Maxwell demonstrated, Guild’s three-colour matching definition of 700.0, 546.1, and 435.8 nanometres will exclude some colours. Accounting for these colours requires calculations with negative numbers; the solution was the creation of imaginary XYZ primaries that bounded human perceptual model. This model requires 3D maths; a 2D solution first proposed by Schrödinger and promoted by Deane Brewster Judd (1900- 1972) was to exclude luminance by removing the Z coordinate from the definition. Colour matches are calculated in two dimensions, x and y, with Z used only under specific illuminants; this was an easier option in a world without digital calculators (Figure 14). Wright reports that colorimetry became commercially viable with the development of the recording spectrometer and the publication of the CIE tables. On colour television he remarks that: “If the CIE system had not been in existence then, I believe the television engineers would have had to invent it since it provided the basic laws and data of additive colour mixture on which colour television depends.” The CIE1931 standard underwent fixation owing to Arthur C Hardy’s Handbook of Colorimetry, 1935. Wright notes: “My belief is that this Handbook did more to popularise the CIE system in its early days than almost any other publication.”40

Colour measurement standards required a standard object for measurement and Munsell provided the solution. After reading Rood’s Modern Chromatics in 1905 he sought to improve methods of colour education. His first colour globe was painted with “balanced colours” which when spun fused to a neutral grey colour (Figure 9). He chose five primary colours: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, instead of “compensatory colours”, and he arranged his colours in perceptual order. He published A Color Notation in 1905 and the Atlas of the Color Solid in 1906, with colour swatches in eight charts, later expanded to fifteen in 1915. The Munsell Colour Company collaborated with the NBS to develop uniform colour scales that were published in 1929 as the Munsell Book of Colour (Figure 10). Dorothy Nickerson (1900-1985) at the Optical Society of America (OSA) investigated Munsell’s colour spacing. Measurement of his sphere showed uneven distribution of the colours and led to the publication the Munsell Renotation in 1943. Munsell’s achievement was to align his hues with applicable tones on a vertical grey scale. “The Munsell system continues to be one of the most widely used physical implementation of an approximately uniform colour order system…”, remarks Kuehni.41

In 1917, Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) produced a double pyramid from red, yellow, and blue arranged by hue, brightness, blackness, and chromacity. His aim was to create a perceptual colour solid of uniform divisions. He used the Hering method of mixture

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where colours are “veiled” with black and white r+s+w=1; (r = colour; s = black and w = white). His central grey scale used logarithmic scaling based on the Weber–Fechner law of just noticeable differences. He published several atlases; one promoted by the Container Corporation of America as the Color Harmony Manual, 1942.42 Robert Luther (1868-1945) worked with Ostwald and attempted to resolve the differences between the Hering and Helmholtz theories creating three-dimensional rhomboid-shaped models of optimal object colour stimuli.43 In 1935, Hans Neugebauer, a student of Luther, used in his dissertation Luther’s solid and HE Ives colour matching functions for white light of 5000°K, and equations of ME Demichel’s to determine a colour matching function using three idealised printing primaries: yellow, blue-green, and purple. This produces a rotated cube on a black white axis (Figure 13).44

Judd from the NBS and Chairman of the OSA strove to develop a model reworked from NBS data with uniform perceptual colour spaces. In 1932 he attributed perception a four- coloured quality instead of three, and noted that “…empirical relations cannot be used as an argument for either form of theory…”(Figure 15). In 1935, he published a model transformed to fit within the Maxwell triangle (Figure 16), and in 1936 he produced another showing the just noticeable differences within the CIE diagram (Figure 17). This demonstrated the non-uniformity of the CIE1931 space and showed that colour differences travel along lines of intensity. His model became the basis of the CIEuv colour space of 1960 and the CIELuv space of 1976. Kuehni and Schwarz note that: “Judd was the first to use ∆E as a symbol for the value of the total calculated difference between two colour stimuli.”45 The easiest way to think about is the ∆E is the distance between two points defined by Cartesian coordinates.

In 1935, David Lewis MacAdam (1910-1998) calculated objective colour models based on the CIE 2° colour space at tungsten illuminant A and daylight illuminant C. His colour solids are ziggurat shaped projections from a base plane of a specified illuminant (Figure 18). In 1942, Elliot Q Adams produced a psychophysical interpretation of the CIE1931 with opponent channels based on interpolation within the retina; this was an update of Luther. MacAdam’s Empirical Line Element of 1942 is a concept based upon the notion of “just noticeable differences” or “Weber fractions” established by Helmholtz, developed by Schrödinger in 1920, and Stiles in 1946. MacAdam strove to determine the “colour matching errors” of an observer using a colorimeter, plotting them as ellipses on the CIE1931 diagram (Figure 19). MacAdam showed that the scale of the chromaticity differences varied in different parts of the CIE diagram.46

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Dorothy Nickerson’s (1900-1985) work on the Munsell Renotation led to the OSA Uniform Color Scales. She calculated the first colour difference formula in 1936 for textiles based on the Munsell solid with hue, value, and chroma expressed as ∆C, ∆H, and ∆V. In 1943, she and SM Newhall used MacAdam’s “optimal colour solid” to calculate a perceptually uniform colour solid with the data from the Munsell Renotations. Then in 1944 with KF Stultz they modified the formula with Adam’s colour model of lightness and opponent differences; this supplied a ∆E to describe colour differences. The Adams– Nickerson formula was standardised in 1968 as ANLAB 40 later becoming the basis for L*a*b* opponent space or CIE1976. CIELAB and CIELUV are three-dimensional spaces much sought after by researchers who desired definitions other than those specified by CIE1931. Both models use the same definition of lightness (L) but differing definitions for hue. AB and UV define differing red/green and blue/yellow opponents. János Schanda in Colorimetry: Understanding the CIE System, 2007 explains that CIELAB and CIELUV are object colour comparators: “Nevertheless in practice both of them have been applied to pseudo object colours (e.g. colours seen on a computer display or a projector screen)…” These colour spaces have not been tested for these conditions.47

By 1976 the profusion of colour difference formulas led CIE to standardise formulas for CIELAB and CIELUV. The CIE1976, the L*a*b* colour space is based upon the Adams–Nickerson formula developed by LG Glassner in 1958. Lightness (L*) is analogous to the Munsell neutral scale combined with two chromatic descriptions (a*, b*) as in Adams’s model. Measurements were taken for CIE tristimulus values (xyz). Hue differences (∆E*) are calculated from differences in hue (∆H*), chroma (∆C*), and lightness (∆L*). Lighting engineers prefer CIELUV colour space, and CIELAB is generally used for object colours.48 CIE1976 had greater uniformity in perceptual differences; further improvements came in CIE94. On Kuehni’s recommendation it was further optimised by DH Kim and JH Nobbs; becoming CIEDE2000 (Figure 20).49

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Blackboxing Vision

Figure 21: David Hubel and Carol Donner (illustrator): Eye, Brain, and Vision, 1995.50 Visual pathway: Eye> Optic chiasm> Optic tract> Lateral geniculate nucleus> Optic radiations> Primary visual cortex.

Figure 22: Ganglion cells are centre-surround receptors that collect and average information from the rods and cones.

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Figure 23: Denis Baylor: Colour Mechanisms of the Eye. Cross-section of the retina. Rods (R), cones (C), photoreceptor and bipolar cells (RB, FB, MB), horizontal cells (H), and amacrine cells (A). Fibres of the retinal ganglion cells (MG, DG) form the optic nerve.51

Figure 24: David Marr: Computational model diagram Left: Computational level: A blackbox describing inputs and outputs. Centre: Algorithmic level: The blackbox’s “decomposition” Right: Implementation level: An actual device functioning in the manner of the algorithmic diagram.52

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Figure 25: Stephen Palmer: Video camera analogy as a theory of mind, 1999. Left: A cup is perceived through an array of dark and light. Centre: A video camera’s pixel representation of the edge of the cup. Right: The cup converted to numbers representing light intensities.53

Figure 26: Stephen Palmer: Recursive decomposition of human cognition. His mind analogy is a series of blackboxes of increasing specialisation, 1999.54

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Figure 27: RWG Hunt: The Reproduction of Colour, 2004. Spectral transmission curves for yellow, magenta, and cyan dyes.55

Figure 28: RWG Hunt: The Reproduction of Colour, 2004. Top: The spectral power of white light. Bottom: Three monochromatic lights that elicit a white response, 2004.56

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Figure 29: Marr’s reduction of an image to a primal sketch very much resembles an artist’s process of reduction. 1. Three Images; 2. Reduction to a grey scale; 3. Reduction to positive (white) and negative (black) values or in graphic arts terms lineart or a bitmap image; 4. “Zero crossings” edge, angle, line and line terminations; that is, disegno.57

Figure 30: id Software: Texture mapping in DOOM, 1993.

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Figure 31:Walter Hay: Penrose Annual, 1905. Texture mapping in stipple and halftone, View of the South Coast, halftone key with stipple colours in four printings, from a photograph by Frank Kimber.58

Figure 32: David Marr: 2.5-D sketch. Left: It resembles an artist’s thumbnail or twentieth-century abstraction. Right: The image is then processed and the object recognised; this resembles our verisimilitude paradigm.59

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Christine Ladd Franklin (1847-1930) in Colour and Colour Theories, 1929, proposed an evolutionary theory of vision to accommodate both Helmholtz and Hering: vision originated as a lightness/darkness discriminator; this receptor split into a blue and a yellow receptor; finally, the yellow receptor split again into a red one and a green one. This is why red and green mix to yellow, and why yellow and blue mix to white. Being evolutionary, red/green colour blindness is more prevalent because it developed later. In 1957, a paradigm shift occurs: Jameson and Hurvich experimentally and quantitatively uphold opponent theory. They explain: “Hering’s own concept of mutually opponent neural processes …now turns out to be perfectly consistent with the picture of neural function…”. Their observers define their own four unique hues, and then they mixed opponent colours to a grey. The responses were plotted on a hue, saturation and brightness diagram, HSB is an approach also used in computer displays. Postulating that opponency was an activity of the nerves, they state: “…we would be inclined to look for a difference between yellow-blue vs. red-green processes, rather than toward isolation of yellow-blue or red-green fibers or nerve cells.”60

The experiments of neurophysiologists, David Hunter Hubel (b1926) and Torsen Nils Wiesel (b1924), as outlined in Hubel’s Eye, Brain, and Vision, 1995, give colore and disegno equal cognitive status. Vision is a process with two pathways, one for colour, and one for edge discrimination. Young, Hilbert, and Hubel all agree that vision only “extracts information that is biologically useful” and yet it is still a “partial or complete mystery”. Perception begins when light strikes the 125 million rods and cones of the retina and in turn they emit electrical signals. Retinal cells are globular cells topographically organised with the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the striate cortex (visual cortex), the connections terminating in higher cortical areas of the occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes. Vision mainly occurs in the primary visual cortex, a plate of cells two millimetres thick and about thirty centimetres square. Each of the globular shaped cells in the visual cortex have individual functions; however, those that are similar are connected by axons and dendrites (Figure 21). Hubel and Wiesel positioned microelectrodes adjacent to the cortical cells of cats to measure electrical signals in response to shape, size, colour, and movement of dots on a microscope slide. The cells revealing opponent (on–off) responses that mapped to the retina (Figure 22). Some cells did not respond; by accident one day they observed responses to the slide edges rather than the dots. They went on to classify cortical cells as: (1) simple, antagonistic (on–off) cells responding to inside and outside a boundary; (2) complex cells, responding to the

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movement of boundaries; and (3) end stop cells, responding to line length. These classifications follow the design principles: line, direction, form and movement.61

The retina has four light-sensitive pigments: rods for dim light, and three cones for bright light, fine detail and colour. Contrary to intuition, Hubel says, “Light, by increasing the potential across the receptor-cell membrane (that is, by hyperpolarizing it), cuts down this transmitter release. Stimulation thus turns the receptors off, strange as that may seem.” Light passes through the transparent structures of the retina to activate the rods and cones; followed by information flowing forward to the bipolar and ganglion cells, indirectly to the horizontal (amacrine) cells, then to bipolar cells, and the optic nerve (Figure 23). Ganglion cells amass information from an array of cones, divided into on-centre and off-centre types; when both the centre and the surround are stimulated transmitter release is reduced, in contrast to outer or inner stimulation. On-centres respond to a light/white stimulus, and off-centres respond to a dark/black stimulus. This on-off response explains why black and dark is as real to us as light and white, confirming Hering’s view that black and dark have a biological basis and Leonardo’s classification of black and white as colours. This contradicts Helmholtz’s view that black and dark was an absence of stimulus. Hubel explains: “Black is as real to us as white, and just as useful. The print on the page you are reading is, after all, black.”62

Descartes cautioned against the camera obscura analogy: “…we must not think that this is by means of this resemblance that the picture causes our sensory awareness”, he believed vision and perception was “ordained by nature.”63 Hubel agrees with Descartes:

It would be more appropriate to compare [the eye] to a TV camera attached to an automatically tracking tripod—a machine that is self focusing, adjusts automatically for light intensity, has a self-cleaning lens, and feeds to a computer with parallel-processing capabilities so advanced that engineers are only just starting to consider similar strategies for the hardware they design.64

The visual system restricts information collection to edges, and the mind fills in the fields with colour, tone, and texture, as painters do when filling a base sketch with paint. Disegno and colore, plus printer’s keyplates and over-printed colours are more than technique; they are a cognitive process. Centre-surround cells are a “most adequate instrument for an average purpose”. Hubel explains:

Rationally, however, we must concede that seeing the large spot by using only cells whose fields are confined to the borders—instead of tying up the entire population whose centers are distributed throughout the entire spot, borders plus interior—is the more efficient system: if you were an engineer that is probably exactly how you would design a machine.65

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In 1958, Russell L De Valois (1926-2003) located red/green, blue/yellow, and light/dark opponent cells in the LGN. Hubel and Margaret Livingstone looked for analogous features in the visual cortex; they discovered centre-surround colour-opponent cells. They classified the cells as: Type One, red/green and yellow/blue; Type Two, centre only red/green and yellow/blue; and Type Three, with no colour preference. Hubel and Livingstone divide the visual process into four pathways: colour, form, binocular and motion. Stating that the process is unclear, they nevertheless reinforce the disegno–colore division, Hubel says: “Our tendency is to think of colour and form as separate aspects of perception this has its counterpart in the physical segregation of blobs and nonblobs regions in the primary visual cortex.” Kuehni argues that: “Some ganglion cells in the LGN appear to have opponent characteristics but there is no evidence that there is a relationship between these cells and our perception of unique hues.”66

Retinal ganglion cells are either large or small collectors of stimulus, communicating through to two layers within the thalamus, then two layers in the visual cortex. The large collectors are primitive: Livingstone, in Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, 2002, coins the “The Where” system to describe it. It is attuned to motion, space, position, depth, figure ground, contrast, the arrangement of a scene; however, it is colourblind. The small collectors or “The What” recognises objects, faces, colour and detail. The Where is analogous to disegno and The What to colore, the two systems overlay each other for image formation. The Where has a lower resolution than The What; this is analogous to process printing: the black or key plate is a higher resolution defining luminosity, edge and form; coloured plates are overlaid at a lower resolution. Clearly, colour printers from Le Blon to Baxter had an innate awareness of this visual process and separated The Where and The What into colour and form. Birren was mistaken when he said: “Will the scientist please be less critical (or neglectful) of the artist and leave the artist to his intuitive and highly personal devices?” These personal devices should be used to inform colour science.

Helmholtz classified the gap between stimulation and perception as an unconscious inference with a probable result. Stephen E Palmer states that modern optics assumes a heuristic or “rule of thumb” process that is “approximately veridical”. Descartes’s camera obscura was a Big Science analogy in his day. Today’s science is still attempting to explain the gap between stimulation and perception. The Big Science analogy it now uses is the brain as a biological computer. Palmer describes:67

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…the chemical analogy underlying structuralist theory [Locke, Berkeley, and Hume], the field theoretical analogy underlying Gestalt theory [Wertheimer, Köhler, and Koffka], and the resonance analogy underlying Gibson’s theory of information pickup. The computer analogy is quite compatible with the inferential analogy of constructivism [Helmholtz] because making inferences is what computers do.68

David Marr (1945-1980) used a computer analogy to define the neurophysiological and psychological requirements of vision. His three questions are very reminiscent of the medieval Islamist scholars: how does the visual system recover clean lines and edges from the spotty retinal image, how does it align the images of both eyes; and how are objects represented for recognition? He delineated three levels of information processing: computational level, what inputs are necessary for a known output; algorithmic level, resembling computer programs – Macs and PCs can produce the same results with different operating systems; and implementation, what action is necessary for the result – computers have hardware and brains wetware and they can produce the same results (Figure 24).69

Palmer and Ruth Kimchi increased the complexity to Marr’s algorithmic level by adding blackboxes inside his blackbox. They have three categories: informational description, where an operation is defined by inputs and outputs; recursive decomposition, where a blackbox is divided into blackboxes of increasing specialisation – e.g. object recognition, shape, texture, location and colour. Recursion continues until reaching primitive event such as a Hubel’s individualistic brain cell (Figure 26). For me, this level of reduction is like extrapolating an edition of Vogue by examining a computer’s RAM. In the implementation level, physical embodiment, processes and representations are divided into internal and external again reminiscent of Descartes. The internal representation is a topographical representation of the external. The collected information then combines to form an inference. Marr explains an inference: “(A) The fly buzzed irritatingly in the window-pane. (B) John picked up a newspaper. The immediate inference is that John’s intentions towards the fly are fundamentally malicious.” There are also hidden assumptions: distance is perceived in converging lines by experience and deduction but inductively these may prove to be diagonal lines on a plane. Fuzzy logic allows for perception of different degrees of truth, where the probable is likely to be true. The Palmer–Kimchi model has four stages of processing after retinal stimulation: image-based, surface-based, object-based, and category-based. Their pixel array analogy taken from digital cameras, uses xy coordinates and is reminiscent al-Kindi’s radiating rays; as such it is an apple that has fallen not far from a Euclidean tree. Each pixel has a

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value for luminosity, with the image resolved by colour overlaying a grey scale image in the manner of four-colour printing (Figure 25).70 The Palmer–Kimchi analogy of perception precepts are as follows:

Colour input is physical. Human vision perceives the electromagnetic spectrum between 400 and 700 nanometres. Wavelength is measured by the quantity of photons that travel over a specific time. Single wavelengths are monochromatic, narrow bands and broad bands are polychromatic (Figure 27).71

Colour output is psychological. The three variables hue, saturation, and lightness are plotted into a solid; this is inclusive of non-spectral colours: red, magenta, purple, brown and olive. The computational analogy is to find psychophysical correspondence between wavelength and experience; a snap if a one-to-one correspondence between wavelength and colour existed. A loose definition defines violet as 450nm or less, blue-green as 280-510nm, 510-550nm, green and yellow-green as 550-570nm, 570-590nm respectively, orange as 590-603nm, and orange-red as 630nm or more. Hue is the mean of wavelength and lightness (the quantity of photons) and saturation is due to wavelength variance. White is the least varied and desaturated and monochromatic light the most varied and saturated; in a distribution curve of lights, more saturated colours have a steeper peak (Figure 27) (Figure 28).72

Image-based stage. Two 2D images are aligned by defining edges, terminations, luminosity, and referencing the retina’s location. Marr referred to this as the primal sketch, which has two parts: the raw primal sketch with “elementary detection”; and the full primal sketch that organises the elements. This concept is concordant with an artist’s thumbnail or cartoon, and a printing keyplate (Figure 29).

Image-based processing. Trichromacy and opponency are a two-stage process within the retina. Years of research into subjective effects such as colour mixture, colour blindness, afterimages, simultaneous contrast, and chromatic adaption inform this stage. Although discovered in the artificial environments of laboratories these observations are assumed correct. Opponent cells analyse the quantity of light within a scene (B/W) which is compared with wavelength (R/G, Y/B). Lateral inhibition from cell connections is considered the cause of subjective effects.73

Surface-based stage. Forms and planes and viewer position are delineated by the surface layout of the geometry and perspective of textures; Marr named this the 2.5-D sketch. This resembles the textures of aquatint and stipple engravers, and crayon-style lithographers. The term is used in game design, for a 2D world appearing 3D through

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texture gradients. As the term implies, an image is not fully resolved at this stage (Figure 30) (Figure 31).74

Surface-based colour processing. Not yet well understood, this controls lightness and colour constancy of reflectance edges; for example, a surface painted in two colours or edges of shadows. It was this stage that Leonardo endeavoured to represent, a gargantuan effort even for an artist of his brilliance.75

The object-based stage. The 3D representation is resolved, either by extrapolation from the edges perceived or from geometric primitives. This process resembles artist practice of drawing forms by plotting volumes rather than perceived edges (Figure 32).

Category-based stage. The divisions of this stage are of into shape, size, colour, location; and the expectation about an object and its function. Artists find representing this stage difficult; for instance, the perceived weight of fluid in a container. Oddly, we appear to have returned to Aristotle’s categories – the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis considered colour naming culturally relative. Colour categories appear to be biologically determined, so the Sapir–Whorf has been superseded by the “basic colour terms” of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. Notable for further exploration is the link between Forsius’s diagram and the first five levels of Berlin and Kay’s scheme (Figure 33). Berlin and Kay showed that colour naming was universal:

The eleven basic colour categories are white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey. If the language encodes fewer than eleven basic colour categories then there are strict limitations on which categories it may encode. The distribution restrictions of colour terms across languages are:

1. All languages contain terms for white and black.

2. If a language contains three colour terms, then it contains a term for red.

3. If a language contains four colour terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).

4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.

5. If a language contains six colour terms, then it contains a term for blue.

6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.

7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains a term for purple, pink, orange, grey, or some combination of these.76

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Figure 33: Sigrid Aronus Forsius colour diagram

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Technique and Theory

Gage delineated Renaissance painting methodology as: disegnato (drawing), ombrato (shading), incarnato (which includes colouring), and, finally, rilevato (three dimensions); a process remarkably similar to Palmer’s analogy of mind. Katz warned against including artists in the study of colour: “It is at once clear that in a painter who must represent objective space in one plane, a type of vision must be developed which differs from naïve observation.” Scientists and artists are inextricably linked through technology, should look to each other for new knowledge and theories of mind. The following chapters examine this linkage of graphic art and colour science. Three-colour printing has undergone transitions from a handicraft to a chemical, mechanical, and then digital, process.77

Euclid’s geometrical optics has journeyed from through medieval Islam to the West. It initiated the love of perspective and verisimilitude in the Renaissance, it separated man and nature under the influence of Kepler, Newton and Descartes, it became the camera obscura, paving the way for monochrome photography, which in the twentieth century repeats printing’s transition to colour. It becomes the authentic testimony of Wright and Guild’s seventeen observers who define the standard observer, it instigates Maxwell’s definition of light as electromagnetic which along with Michael Faraday’s (1791-1867) electrodes, anodes, and cathodes evolve into image scanning technology – and, voilà, McLuhan’s electronic age begins. Colour science’s dispositionalist philosophy is a socially constructed Latourian hybrid of nonhumans (light and theory), humans (observers and researchers) and politics (committees); as Johnston contends: “Thus an evolved version of the three-colour theory of Maxwell and Helmholtz formed the basis of the international system because it was socially accepted as an operational concept by physicists and physiologists and, in restricted circumstances, by psychologists.” The next chapters will show how by the close of the twentieth century the application of CIE models in the graphic arts industry makes colour fixed, repeatable, dispositional, mediated by technology, the penultimate blackbox, and a Latourian hybrid in pursuit of repeatable colour verisimilitude.78

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Chapter Four References

1 T Young, Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807) 786. 2 W de Wiveleslie Abney and General Literature Committee Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Colour Measurement and Mixture, The Romance of Science (London; New York: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, E & JB Young & Co, 1891) 135. 3 TS Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1962) 11. 4 I Newton, Opticks, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light Microform, 4 ed. (London: Prometheus Books, 1730) 124-25. HE Ives, “Thomas Young and the Simplification of the Artist’s Palette,” Proceedings of the Physical Society 46.1 (1934). A Schopenhauer, Georg Stahl and Philipp Otto Runge, On Vision and Colors and Color Sphere, 1st ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) 124. 5 Wave, 2009, Oxford University Press, Available: 6 H von Helmholtz, “Physiological Optics,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry-Fundamentals. SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. David L MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1866 & 1993) 27. 7 PD Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1981). 8 JC Maxwell, “The Diagram of Colours,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry-Fundamentals, SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. DL MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1857 & 1993) 17. 9 JC Maxwell, “On the Theory of Compound Colours, and the Relations of the Colours of the Spectrum,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 150 (1860). 10 T Young, “On the Theory of Light and Colours,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry-Fundamentals, SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. DL MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1993) 9. Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 1-18. RA Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color (Boston, Massachusetts: Kluwer Academic, 1999) 134-35. JM Eder, History of Photography (New York: Dover Publications, 1978) 640. RG Kuehni and A Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) 129-30. RL Feller and C Parkhurst, “Who Invented the Color Wheel?,” Color Research & Application 7.3 (1982). 11 MR Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science, 4th ed. / Michael R Peres, editor-in-chief. ed. (Amsterdam; London: Focal, 2007) 125. Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 20-41. JM Eder, Ausfnhrliches Handbuch Der Photographie with Plates. (Halle a/S., 1884). Eder, History of Photography 640. 12 Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 48, 54. H von Helmholtz and James PC Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics (New York: Dover Publications, 1909 & 1962) 111-12. 13 Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 85. Helmholtz and Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics 129. 14 Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 88. Helmholtz and Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics 123-24. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 132-33.

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Chapter Four References

J Schanda and International Commission on Illumination., Colorimetry : Understanding the CIE System (Vienna, Austria Hoboken, NJ: CIE/Commission internationale de l’eclairage; Wiley- Interscience, 2007) 223. D Burton, “Applying Color,” Art Education 37.1 (1984). 15 R Sharp, K Kruzelnitski and 5 Live BBC Radio, “Dr Karl and the Naked Scienist: Metacognitive Accuracy 1 April 2010,” Up All Night. Dr Karl’s Science Phone In (BBC Radio 5 live, 2010), vol. 16 Helmholtz and Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics. Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century. 17 HG Grassmann, “Theory of Compound Colours,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry- Fundamentals, SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. DL MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1853 & 1993) 10-11. Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 111-14. RG Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present (Hoboken, NJ: J Wiley, 2003) 72. Schanda and International Commission on Illumination., Colorimetry : Understanding the CIE System 26. Helmut Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables (Berlin; London: Springer, 2001) 84. 18 Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables 80. 19 Crone, A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Light and Color 14. Sherman, Colour Vision in the Nineteenth Century 172-75, 203-04, 08. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 130-31. 20 Maxwell, “The Diagram of Colours.” 21 M Cohn, “Three-Color Process: Its History and Adaptability to Printing Methods,” The Process Year Book. An Illustrated Review of All Photo-Mechanical Processes, Penrose’s Annual (London: Penrose and Company, 1896). 22 W Gamble, “Modern Colour Processes,” Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble, ed. RM Burch (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing in association with Adam Hilger, 1910 & 1983) 253. 23 AH Munsell, A Color Notation, 5th ed. (New York: Munsell Color Co., 1919) vi. 24 M Fairchild, Munsell Book of Color and Color Atlas of the Munsell Color System, 2005, Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Munsell_Books.jpg. 25 E Schrodinger, Selected Papers on Colorimetry-Fundamentals. SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77. Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1993. 77 26 Wikipedia, CIE 1931 Color Space, 2011, Webpage, Wikipedia, Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931. 27 D Wyble and A Kraushaar, “The Theoretical Basis of Multicolor Letterpress Printing, HEJ Neugebauer,” Color Research & Application 30.5 (2005). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 142-43. 28 HS Fairman and MH Brill, “How the CIE 1931 Color-Matching Functions Were Derived from Wright-Guild Data,” Color Research & Application 22 (1997). 29 DB Judd, “Chromaticity Sensibilites to Stimulus Differences,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry- Fundamentals. SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. DL MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1993) 188. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 154. 30 Judd, “A Maxwell Triangle Yeilding Uniform Chromacity Scales,” 235. Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 155.

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Chapter Four References

31 Judd, “Estimation of Chromacity Differences and Nearest Colour Temperature on the Standard ICI 1931 Colorimetric System,” 260. 32 DL MacAdam, On the Geometry of Color Space, Selected Papers on Colorimetry- Fundamentals. SPIE Milestone Series ; V. Ms 77, ed. DL MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1993) 301. 33 MacAdam, On the Goemetry of Colour Space 301. 34 WM Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press; MIT Press, 1969) 54. 35 S Johnston, A History of Light and Colour Measurement: Science in the Shadows (Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2001) 126, 33, 51. 36 Johnston, A History of Light and Colour Measurement: Science in the Shadows 170-71. LT Troland, “Report of Committee on Colorimetry for 1920-21,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 6 (1922). WD Wright, “The Historical and Experimental Background to the 1931 CIE System of Colorimetry,” Colorimetry: Understanding the CIE System, eds. János Schanda and International Commission on Illumination. (Vienna, Austria & Hoboken, New Jersey: CIE Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage; Wiley-Interscience, 2007). 37 Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 162. Johnston, A History of Light and Colour Measurement: Science in the Shadows 173. Fairman and Brill, “How the CIE 1931 Color-Matching Functions Were Derived from Wright- Guild Data.” Wright, “The Historical and Experimental Background to the 1931 CIE System of Colorimetry.” 38 Johnston, A History of Light and Colour Measurement: Science in the Shadows 173. 39 D Katz, The World of Colour (London: Kegan Paul, 1935) 36-37. Wright, “The Historical and Experimental Background to the 1931 CIE System of Colorimetry.” WD Wright, “The Golden Jubilee of Colour in the CIE 1931-1981,” Color Research & Application 7.1 (1982). 40 Fairman and Brill, “How the CIE 1931 Color-Matching Functions Were Derived from Wright- Guild Data.” Wright, “The Golden Jubilee of Colour in the CIE 1931-1981.” AC Hardy and Color Measurement Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Handbook of Colorimetry (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mass. Institute of Technology Press, 1936). 41 AH Munsell, A Color Notation: An Illustrated System Defining All Colors and Their Relations by Measured Scales of Hue, Value, and Chroma, 11th ed. (Baltimore: Munsell Color Co., 1913 & 1961). AH Munsell, Atlas of the Munsell Color System (Wadsworth, Howland & Co.: Boston, 1915). Munsell Color (Firm). AH Munsell and AEO Munsell, Munsell Book of Color, Defining, Explaining, and Illustrating the Fundamental Characteristics of Color, Standard ed. (Baltimore, Md: Munsell Color Company, 1929). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 114-15, 61. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 84-86. 42 E Jacobson and W Ostwald, The Color Harmony Manual and How to Use It (Chicago: Color Laboratories Division, Container Corp. of America, 1942). Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 245-47. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 89-90. 43 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 139.

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Chapter Four References

44 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 142-43. Kazuo Ed Sayanagi ed., Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations: SPIE. Wyble and Kraushaar, “The Theoretical Basis of Multicolor Letterpress Printing, Hans EJ Neugebauer.” 45 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 154-55. Judd, “Chromaticity Sensibilites to Stimulus Differences,” 182-207. RS Berns, Fred W Billmeyer and Max Saltzman, Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley, 2000) 172. 46 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 144-45, 155-56, 158-59. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 216-19. Schanda and International Commission on Illumination, Colorimetry: Understanding the CIE System 58. 47 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 157-58. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 149-50. Schanda and International Commission on Illumination, Colorimetry: Understanding the CIE System 60-65. 48 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 167-68. Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 229-32. 49 Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 244-47. , New Weighting Functions for the Weighted CIELAB Colour Difference Formula: CIE. 50 DH Hubel and C Donner (illustrator), Eye, Brain, and Vision, Scientific American Library: Distributed by WH Freeman, New York. 51 D Baylor, “Colour Mechanisms of the Eye,” Colour: Art & Science, the Darwin College Lectures, eds. Janine Bourriau and Trevor Lamb (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 106. 52 SE Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: MIT Press, 1999) 72-73. 53 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 86-87. 54 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 75. 55 RWG Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour, Wiley-IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology, 6th ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004) 26. 56 Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 71. 57 D Marr and E Hildreth, “Theory of Edge Detection,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1980). 58 W Hay, View of the South Coast, Halftone Key with Stipple Colours in Four Printings, from a Photograph by Frank Kimber, Penrose Pictorial Annual. An Illustrated Review of the Graphic Arts. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. X (London: Penrose & Co., 1904-5). 59 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 88. DMarr, “Representing Visual Information,” (1977). 60 Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present 106, 211. C Ladd Franklin, Colour and Colour Theories (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929). Hvon Helmholtz and James PC Southall, Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics (Ithaca, NY: Optical Society of America, 1924). LM Hurvich and D Jameson, “An Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision,” Psychological Review.Print); 1939-1471 (Electronic (1957).

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61 DH. Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision, Scientific American Library Series; No. 22, 2nd ed. (New York: Scientific American Library: Distributed by WH Freeman, 1995) 2, 7, 61. Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 65. Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision 10. 62 Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision 36-38, 43-44, 48, 54. 63 R Descartes, John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 64. 64 Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision 33. 65 Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision 56. 66 RL De Valois, “Color Vision Mechanisms in the Monkey,” Journal of General Physiology 43 (1960). MS Livingstone and DH Hubel, “Anatomy and Physiology of a Color System in the Primate Visual Cortex,” Journal of Neuroscience 4.1 (1984). Kuehni, Color Space and Its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present 339. Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 193-95. Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision 180, 89. 67 M Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (New York Harry N Abrams, 2002) 50. F Birren, “Science and Art, Objective and Subjective,” Color Research & Application 10.3 (1985). Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 56-58, 71. 68 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 71. 69 Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. D Marr, Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information (San Francisco; New York: W.H. Freeman, 1982). Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 71-73. SSutherland, David Courtenay Marr, 1987, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t159.e561. 70 SE Palmer and R Kimchi, “Information Processing Approach to Cognition,” Approaches to Cognition: Contrasts and Controversies, eds. Terry J Knapp and Lynn C Robertson (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986). D Marr, “Artificial Intelligence – a Personal View,” Artificial Intelligence 9 (1977). Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 70-87. 71 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 39-50. 72 Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 4-5. LM Hurvich, Color Vision (Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, 1981) 39-50. Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 96-100. 73 Baylor, “Colour Mechanisms of the Eye,” 103-26. Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 107-12. Hurvich, Color Vision 113-35. 74 Marr, “Representing Visual Information.” 75 Palmer, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology 122-37. 76 B Berlin and P Kay, Basic Color Terms : Their Universality and Evolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) 2-3. P Kay and CK McDaniel, “The Linguistic Significance of the Meanings of Basic Colour Terms,” Readings on Color, eds. A Byrne and DR Hilbert, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997). 77 GP Bellori and H Wohl, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, New translation and critical ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). C Pace, Disegno et Colore, 2010, Available: www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T0228792010. J Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993) 117. Katz, The World of Colour 138-39.

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78 MMcLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). M McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel, The Medium Is the Massage (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). F James, Michael Faraday, 2003, Oxford University Press, Available: . PJ Westwick, Electromagnetism, 2010, Oxford University Press Available: . Johnston, A History of Light and Colour Measurement: Science in the Shadows 183. K Spring, “The Wright Stuff,” Physics in Technology 18.2 (1987).

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Figure 1: Daguerre camera made by Giroux, 1839.1

5. Colour Fixation

I can employ light to give rise to certain actions. On the table before you lie daguerreotypes, calotypes, cyanotypes, chrysotypes, enargyotypes, photographs, produced by the action of light. Man alone can use light, and in the instances before you it even required such men as Daguerre, Herschel, Fox Talbot, and Hunt, to turn the force to account. Alfred Smee, Introductory Lecture Delivered at the Aldersgate School of Medicine, 1844.2

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Introduction

Penrose Annual, 1895-1982 — under the editorship of William Gamble from 1895 to 1933, and then Richard Bertram Fishenden from 1934 to 1956 — accounted for the changing face of reproduction technologies up to the fixation of technique in the latter half of the century. From the 1938 edition designed by Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) a change in content evolved with articles by typography historian Beatrice Warde (1900-1969), typographer Stanley Morison (1889-1967), and artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). From Fishenden’s death in 1956 editorial policy underwent a notable change emphasising typography, design, communication, and aesthetics. Interestingly, this change aligns with the automation, standardisation, and corporatisation of graphic art techniques.3

CG Zander in Photo-Mechanical Colour Printing V. Chromo-Lithography, 1909 wrote that letterpress “…has so established itself throughout the world mainly for its cheapness. When, however, the latter is of not a prime consideration, and when correct and artistic colour rendering, free from any colour-tone, is required chromo-lithography still holds its own.” Gamble, always a visionary, predicts in The Year’s Progress in Colour Work, 1910 that: “No doubt intaglio photogravure will hold the field for some time to come, but its successor will undoubtedly be rotary lithogravure, if we may coin a name for it.” HW Bretherwick in The Coming Race: A Review of Some Possibilities, 1911 augured three- and four-colour rotary web offset machines, transfers by telegraphy, typecasting machines, with space left for three-colour halftones produced like Kodaking. He said: “…who shall, or can, say what revolutions in illustrative processes and their handmaids photography, photo-engraving, electrotyping and stereotyping, its perfecting may bring?”4

AJ Newton in Mechanization and Quality, 1932 saw automation as no threat to craftsmanship: “I do not believe that the introduction of mechanical aids means either less quality or less craftsmanship. The craftsmanship may be different, but I believe it requires just as high type of man to produce good work with the help of machinery as it did to produce good work without.” Fishenden’s The Battle of the processes, 1951 outlined the diverse technologies of his time. Letterpress was suitable for type, combinable with wood engraving for illustration; halftone however, requires coated papers. Offset lithography was suitable for high-speed printing and was showing improved “delicacy and vigour”, with the advantage of printing on varied papers, albeit type was ragged. Collotype was “without equal for facsimile reproduction”. Rotary letterpress offset was a recent

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innovation. Finally, screen-printing was “too early to predict.” By 1956 Fishenden called for industry professionalism: “It cannot be stressed too strongly that, in the main, printing is no longer a craft but a highly specialised industry which calls for a knowledge of scientific backgrounds and this is what technology means.”5 In 1957, just five years before RCA and Fairchild began marketing their scanners the new Penrose Annual editor RS Hutching in his Editorial Commentary, observed:

New methods of electronic register control, of automatic correction of colour variations on the run, and of ‘feeding back’ information on the running speeds and output of individual machines are combining to encourage some fundamental reconsideration of the relevance of automation techniques to printing.6

The twentieth century is the ground for the “battle of the processes”, each strove for verisimilitude and repeatability of the colour photograph fully automated without interference from the retouching of the dreaded fine-etcher. At the beginning of the century colour imaging was a craft of diverse techniques, changing by a mid-century to a mono-industry dominated by offset lithography. Early photography did not distinguish between print and chemical techniques or between artist, photographer, printer, and scientist; a photographer was any user of a photosensitive emulsion. By 1937, a lack of colour verisimilitude “…sets the colour-photographer a very important task; he can deliberately choose the nature and degree of transmutation of nature and lead it to a harmonious result,” wrote Moholy-Nagy.7 By century’s close millennia of colour knowledge are blackboxed into everyday objects such as mobile phones.

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Fixation of the Camera Obscura

Figure 2: (Joseph) Nicéphore Niépce: Portrait of Cardinal d’Ambrose, 1826.8 The first photoengraving.

Figure 3: (Joseph) Nicéphore Niépce: View from Niépce’s window. He required an exposure of eight hours, 1826. The first photograph.9

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Figure 4: William Henry Fox Talbot: Latticed window, Lacock Abbey, 1835.10 Earliest surviving paper negative.

Figure 5: William Henry Fox Talbot: Pencil of Nature Plate VI, The Open Door, 1844.11

The actinic effect of light upon matter is ancient knowledge, practised worldwide in purple dyeing with mollusc secretions; the purple hue is controlled by exposure to light. Johann Heinrich Schultze (1687-1744) proved experimentally that silver salts turned black on exposure to light, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) that unexposed silver salts could be cleared with ammonia. Jean Senebier (1742-1809) measured the actinic effect of various wavelengths of light; William Frederick Herschel (1738-1822)

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discovered infrared, and Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776-1810) ultra-violet and its greater actinic effect. Light was more complex than previously contemplated, inspiring research and publication in science and popular journals. Proto-photographers Elizabeth Fulhame (fl1780-1794) explored fixing silver and gold to textiles with light; and Thomas Wedgwood (1786-1788) and Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) experimented with silver nitrate on paper, glass, and leather but failed in the fixation of images.12

In 1816, image fixation was partially achieved by (Joseph) Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) with silver chloride soaked paper and nitric acid. Engravers knew that bitumen was difficult to remove after exposure to light. Coating a plate, he contacted a transparent engraving, unexposed areas were removed with lavender oil and the plate etched for printing (Figure 2). The first photograph was in fact a photoengraving plate mounted into a camera obscura (Figure 3). Failing to communicate his discovery to the Royal Society he went into partnership with Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) who saw the possibilities for profit. Daguerre and Charles Bouton (1781-1853) were famous for their dioramas with perfect illusions of reality. Tracing his scenes with a camera obscura Daguerre was inspired to fix the images; however, his early experiments failed. His partnership with Niépce supplied the background research he needed to create his Daguerreotypes with silver plates exposed to mercury vapour and fixed with salt. In 1839, Dominique Francois Jean Arago (1786-1853) announced to the world the French gift of the Daguerre and Niépce processes, noting that: “It requires no knowledge of drawing, and does not depend upon any manual dexterity.” (Figure 1) Photography was was beginning its journey to democratisation.13

It was William Henry Fox Talbot’s (1800-77) lack of talent as a draftsman that led to his frustrations with William Hyde Wollaston’s (1766-1828) camera lucida, setting him on the same path to fix the images. He experimented with writing paper soaked in silver salts and discovered that weaker solutions had greater actinic effect. Image fixation was achieved with a strong salt solution (Figure 4). Talbot recognised the potential for the reproduction of drawings, engravings, and manuscripts for distribution “to a few friends”. Exhibiting his photogenic drawings to the Royal Society, he did not achieve the fidelity of Daguerreotypes, yet even so Michael Faraday (1791-1867) remarked: “No Human hand has hitherto traced such lines as these drawings display; and what man can hereafter do, now that Dame Nature has become his drawing mistress, it is impossible to predict.” Anna Atkin’s (1799-1871) British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions is the first book that used photsentives emulsions. She produced photograms using John Frederick William

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Herschel’s (1792-1871) Cyanotype. Talbot’s Calotype paper positives and negatives first appeared to have a flaw as the negative was destroyed to produce the positive. Talbot recognised the aim of photography was to produce multiple images and only his process could achieve this. Nicolas Henneman (1813-1898) his technical assistant went on to produce prints for the first book of photography: The Pencil of Nature, 1844 (Figure 5). Alfred Donne (1801-1878), Joseph Barres (1796-1844), and Alphonse Louis Poitevin (1819-1892) attempted to etch Daguerreotypes; however, the bite was weak and produced only a few prints in contrast with Henneman’s thousands of prints for Talbot. Hipolyte Fizeau (1819-1896) and WR Grove (1811-1896) attempted electrotyping etched Daguerreotypes to improve durability. Alois Auer (1813-69) and Franz von Kobell (1803-1875) perfected electrotyping, producing nature images (cast photograms) that simulated watercolours. Despite valiant efforts with electrotyping, Daguerreotype remained an object-of-art, never meeting the commercial requirement of repeatability.14

Inspired by Fizeau’s improved etching method Talbot began etching plates exposed with an emulsion of bichromated gelatine. Talbot’s Photoglyphy process applied Mungo Ponton’s (1802-1880) observation that by the action of light bichromate of potash became insoluble to water. Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (1820-1891) had also discovered that the size in the paper enhanced an emulsion’s sensitivity to light. Talbot patented a halftone process in 1858, suggesting using gauze between a negative and plate; he later used aquatint, and noted the possibility of ruled screens rules with lines.15

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Objective Colour Fixation

Figure 6: John FW Herschel: Sheet of experimental photographs of the spectrum, 1841-42.16

Figure 7: RWG Hunt: The Lippmann method of colour photography.17

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Figure 8: Lumiere Technology of Paris: Uses multi-spectral digital cameras to capture images of Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom of Arles” from ultraviolet to infrared, 2008.18

John FW Herschel – an astronomer, chemist, botanist, and part-time father of photography – recommended to Daguerre and Talbot hyposulfite of soda (hypo) in 1819 as a better fixing solution. He explored direct positive processes using tinctures of plants and highly coloured electrolytical compounds that Alfred Smee (1818-1877) was creating. Direct positives occur when underexposed plates are overdeveloped. He delineated these endeavours as actino-chemistry instead of photography. In 1840, he noted colour was not determined by wavelength: “…the chemical energy is distributed throughout the spectrum in such a way as to be, by no means, a function of refrangibility, but to stand in relation to other physical qualities, both of the ray and of the analysing medium…”. His colour experiments caused bleaching rather than darkening; he and Talbot had observed that a coloured ray could produce an effect of similar hue, and that a wavelength had the tendency to destroy the complementary colour. He successfully recorded colour spectrums, but they were fugitive. He proposed: “…the possible future production of naturally coloured photographic images” (Figure 6).19

Herschel’s spectrum records are objective colour records, not psychophysical ones. Joseph Solomon Friedman (b1899) in History of Colour Photography, 1944 classified colour photography with classic philosophical terms: “objective” and “subjective”; E König’s Natural-Color Photography, 1906 used “direct” and “indirect”; and James Christie’s Lumière Process of Color Photography, 1910 used “psychological” or “physical”.20 The wavelength recording and emulation of human vision distinction has

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been forgotten through the blackboxing of three-colour photography. Friedman defines objective colour:

It is possible to draw a curve which gives the percentage transmission of each wavelength that is reflected from a coloured object, this curve is called the spectrum of colour. In this case we no longer consider colour to be a sensation sensed only by some mysterious forces with in the brain, but we must consider it a property of matter, the property of the selective absorption by its spectrum.21

Becquerel in 1848 and Levi Hill in 1850 produced coloured but fugitive Daguerreotypes using Herschel’s principle that silver salts will take on the wavelength. Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919) attributed Becquerel’s images to interference. Claude Felix Niépce de Saint-Victor improved upon Becquerel’s technique and exhibiting these at the Paris Exposition of 1862. Poitevin, Saint-Florent, Raphael Kopp all explored direct photography, and Otto Wiener showed that Poitevin’s Daguerreotypes were attributable to bleaching.22

In 1891 Gabriel Lippman (1845-1921) used interference to record the coloured spectrums. Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis Lumière (1864-1948) developed a fine-grained photosensitive albumen glass plate for Lippmann. Behind the photographic plate is a plate holding mercury, reflected light interferes with itself producing standing waves at the emulsion. The Lumières attempted to commercialise Lippmann’s process but the ease of their own three-colour Autochrome caused its demise. Its restricted viewing angle, dim image, and danger of mercury poisoning were also drawbacks. Lipmann explains his technique: “This is no more than a phenomenon of selective reflection as in the case of the soap bubble or mother-of-pearl.” (Figure 7) FW Lancaster’s 1895 microdispersion is another objective technique: a light passes through a prism, then a grating, a spectrum is spread along the slits and a panchromatic emulsion records the spectral intensities. An image is reproduced by shining white light back through the negative and a prism, the negative blocking the spectrum generated by the prism in various parts. Microdispersion is a laboratory curiosity and an unwieldy process. Friedman suggested using microdispersion to create theoretically correct filters for three-colour analysis.23

A multispectral and spectral imaging technique continues to be an area of research. Multispectral imaging is analogous to three-colour capture but endeavours to record more spectra. Spectral imaging strives to record most or all the spectra of a scene. In 1914, Nikolai Morizo procured spectrograms of the earth’s surface from a balloon; EL Krinov, again airborne in 1930, used multiple filters to create images of “Natural Formations” at

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specific spectra. The 1960s saw the first use of multispectral cameras larger than the visual spectrum for meteorology, astronomy, geology, ecology, and military use. By the 1970s, technical improvements heralded commercial application of spectral imaging and Linotype-Hell patented a scanning system of this type. Currently, Munsell Color Science Laboratory is pursuing “Multi-channel Visible-Spectrum Imaging” for fine art reproduction, and Lumiere Technology is developing a multi-spectral digital camera (Figure 8). In studios and laboratories lighting can be controlled and the spectra calculated easily, this cannot be said of natural environments were multiple light sources and reflection make calculation of the spectra difficult. This is the same problem Leonardo faced. Even with six-colour output, colour matching remains troublesome between varied devices due to gamut mapping.24 Imai, Rosen, and Berns explain the Munsell Colour Laboratory technique:

The goal was to perform preliminary experiments by imaging a target consisting of pigments based on direct spectral measurements of the painting. These experiments are useful in preparing for future imaging that will result in hardcopy that will yield the least metameric matches to the original colours. The approach evaluated consisted of capturing scenes through a trichromatic digital camera combined with multiple filterings and six-colour printing. The system was designed to estimate the original scene spectra on a pixel-by-pixel basis.25

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Subjective Colour Fixation

Figure 9: Frederic Eugene Ives: Photochromoscopic Apparatus, United States Patent and Trade Mark Office, 1900.26

Figure 10: Frederic Eugene Ives: Photochromoscopic Apparatus, United States Patent and Trade Mark Office, 1900.27

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Figure 11: Frederic Eugene Ives: Kromskop Triple View Three-Color Camera and Viewer28

Figure 12: Vivex System: One Shot camera, 1936.29

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Figure 13: Louis Ducos du Hauron: Still life with rooster and parrot. Top: Three-colour carbon print, 1869; Left: Dye imbibition process, 1879; Right: Heliochrome assembly print, 1879.30

Figure 14: Louis Ducos du Hauron: Stone lithography sample to demonstrate photographic three-colour printing, 1870.31

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Figure 15: AJ Bull: An Outline of the Principles of Tri-Colour Printing. Penrose Annual, 1904-05.32 Reproduction of an almost normal spectrum by the tri-colour process. A. Red negative; B. Green negative; C. Blue negative; D. Positive print from A in greenish-blue ink; E. Positive print from B in violet-pink ink; F. Positive print from C in yellow ink; G. Reproduction of the spectrum. These filters are not designed to copy the spectrum accurately, but to render ordinary colours well. It will be noticed that the whole of the red up to 7000nm is not recorded, owing to the insensitiveness of photographic plates to the extreme red. The record terminates at 4000nm, the ultra-violet not being photographed.

Figure 16: Arthur Hübl: Three-Colour Photography: With Special Reference to Three-Colour Printing and Similar Processes, 1904.33

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Figure 17: Sanger E Shepherd: Photography of Colour, Penrose Annual, 1899.34 Chart showing the manner in which the Printing Colours for Composite Heliochromy are derived from Professor Clerk Maxwell’s Projection Colours, Red, Green, and Blue-Violet

In The New Colour Photography and the Art of Painting, 1929 Adrian Bernard Klein discusses the Western bias for verisimilitude. He remarks that instantaneous colour film photography by tri-colour film stocks will provide a reprieve for painters: “For it will soon be generally understood that painting is concerned with subjective images and not with objective images.” Contrary to this view three-colour reproduction is subjective as it seeks to mimic the retina’s three receptors. The visual system is not as simple as early colour science reasoned; operators of the first flush of trichromatic reproduction did not have the benefit of neurobiological research, and their practice was tainted by a faith in the artist’s triad. Three-colour capture, though subjective in theory, is in practice objective, as materials and technique determine colour records. Specifically, multispectral and three-colour recordings are only as good as the knowledge of the filters used. Friedman notes that early colour photographers sought filters that matched response curves of vision: “The poor results obtained when using filters for colour separation whose transmission correspond to the colour-mixture curves, soon forced the subjective idea of colour reproduction into the discard, and the further development of the subject of colour photography appears to have proceeded on objective lines.”35

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Henry Collen (1797-1879), drawing master to Queen Victoria, suggested superimposing three dye positives of Brewster’s primaries; Eugen Freiherr von Ransonnet-Villez (1838-1926) conceived it simultaneously, but collodion plates of the correct colour sensitivity were unavailable. The first practical theories regarding three-colour photography came from Charles Cros (1842-1888) in a sealed package delivered to the Académie des Sciences in 1867 and published in Les Mondes in 1869 that described separation negatives and their additive synthesis in a device called a chromometer. An identical device was developed by Louis Ducos du Hauron (1837-1920) and improved by Frederic Eugene Ives (1856-1937) in 1898, all collectively known as chromoscopes (Figure 9, Figure 10 and Figure 11). Chromoscopes developed into portable one-shot- cameras (Figure 12). Ives began his three-colour research by exploring halftone but realised that only additive processes would represent colour vision. His chromoscopes were “simple and practical cameras” which captured colour records on a single negative, and applied trichromatic principles in a “quantifiably perfect” manner that: “…gave back to the eye through the use of an optical instrument everything which the eye saw when looking directly at the object photographed. This achievement was acclaimed by scientists who, owing to the practical failure of former attempts along similar lines, had become skeptics…”36

In 1862, Ducos du Hauron sent a letter to the Académie de Médecine et Sciences: A Physical Solution of the Problem Reproducing Colours by Photography, and published a collection of his writings Les Couleurs en Photographie, Solution du Problème, 1869 explaining all future three-color photographic and printing processes both additively and the subtractively.37 In the letter du Hauron describes light with Brewster’s primaries:

The method I propose is based on the principle that the simple colours are reduced to three – red, yellow, and blue – the combination of which in different proportions gives us the infinite variety of shades we see in nature. One may now say that analysis of the solar spectrum by means of a glass which passes only one colour has proved that red exists in all parts of the spectrum, and the like for yellow and blue, and that one is forced to admit that the solar spectrum is formed of three superimposed spectra having their maxima of intensity at different points. Thus one might consider a picture, which represents nature, as composed of three pictures superimposed, the one red, the second yellow, and the third blue. The result of this would be that if one could obtain separately these three images by photography and the reunite them in one, one would obtain an image of nature with all the tints that it contains.38

Du Hauron created the first three-colour carbon prints in 1865 (Figure 13), described the additive screen plate process, he discussed bleaching out and lenticular techniques,

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produced the first tripack stock that sandwiched three colour-sensitised films upon one another. He produced the first three-colour lithographic print colour separated photographically in 1870; however, he used blue, green, and orange filters, printing them in red, blue, and yellow (Figure 14). Eder, Sipley, and Burch all supply very confusing and conflicting discussions on his not adhering to the principal of printing in the complementary colour of a filter. But he also took out a patent for a process that used red, green, and violet filters, suggesting a good command of the principle. He put forward other applications: “We can choose, between the pigment process, Woodburytype, Collotype, the dusting-in process, or the silver chloride method, with the suitable toning baths, etc.” FE Ives is scathing of du Hauron’s non-scientific approach and his use of filters and printout colours of the same hue. Ives’s practice involved colour analysis with a photospectrograph so the three negatives produced in his camera “would reproduce the spectrum in three pure spectrum colours, red, green, and blue-violet…”. Professor Stebbing said of du Hauron’s colour photographs: “The coloration was very poor, and it was necessary to take into consideration the difficulties of their production not to find them bad.” The London Daily Graphic, 1894 recognised Ives’s improvement of the chromoscope: “This process is a particularly interesting instance of scientific advance realised by careful and accurate applications of the colour principle of sight…”39

Early photographic emulsions had restricted sensitivity to blue and violet light. In 1873, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (1834-1898) followed J Waterhouse’s suggestion that collodion plates could have broader spectral sensitivity by tinting them with dyes such as corallin, aldehyde green, eosine, and cyanine. Fortunately, pigments made from coal tar, a useless byproduct of gas production, had become available. In 1856, William Perkin (1838-1907) was attempting to produce artificial quinine from coal tar aniline, observed a dark residue that became the dye mauve (mauvine). Perkin made his fortune with mauvine and kick-started the profession of organic chemistry required for the commercialisation and democratisation of colour photography. Vogel found sensitisers for green light in 1873 and orange light in 1884; red to was not found till the early twentieth-century. In The New Sensitizers as Applied to Collodion Emulsion, 1906 Henry O Klein, says: “…we are still looking forward to a panchromatic sensitizer for collodion emulsion, which combines general sensitiveness with good colour rendering, gives a good half-tone and permits of comparatively large apertures in screen work.”40 (Figure 15)

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The early days of three-colour imaging suffered from much confusion over primary and complementary light and pigments. Martin Cohn in Three-Color Process, Its History and Adaptability to Printing Methods, 1896 remarks that “This principle, quite right in itself, led Cros and Ducos du Hauron, Albert, and others, to the entirely wrong proposal to print the plate on which the yellow rays have not acted in its complementary color, viz., blue, the plate on which the red rays have not acted in green, etc.” Three-colour printing at the turn of the century lacked an established lexicon; a “plate” can refer to glass negatives and metal printing plates, and a “screen” to a ruled halftone screen or liquid filters to separate the spectrum. Cohn quotes Vogel to explain dyes as sensitisers, filters and ink relationship: “The sensitizer of the photographic plate must be used as printing ink; or if the sensitizer, being an aniline dye, could not be turned into a permanent ink, an ink has to be selected which shows a spectroscopic efficiency as alike as possible to the sensitizer.”41

A figure from Arthur von Hübl’s (1853-1932) Three-Colour Photography, 1915 provides an indication of early pigments used (Figure 16). Hübl plots trichromatic printing inks in Maxwell’s triangle within Newton’s colour circle divided by Fraunhofer’s absorption lines. Note the difference in gamut between the inner triangle of permanent artist’s primaries: madder lake, Prussian blue, and cadmium yellow; and the larger gamut triangle of impermanent inks: nachtrosa, veridene lake, and cadmium yellow (Table 1). Hübl discusses the loss of three-colour synthesis knowledge:

Many printing inks specially prepared for and used in trichromatic work show insufficient knowledge of the requirements of the process. We still find a blue which is almost ultramarine and a reddish yellow used since the beginning of trichromatic printing. No chromolitho artist could compose a pure green with such colours, but it is expected that the three-colour process will do such miracles. We must select a yellow without a red shade, a pink like carmine, and a greenish blue, and we should not be led astray by occasional good results with other inks.42

Despite wavelength measurements Helmholtz’s list of primaries and complementary colour names would have provided little assistance to the early colour printer, as the terms are quite meaningless; particularly indigo, a term fixed into the spectrum by Newton that describes a wide range of blues that we know from denim jeans (Table 2).43

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Name Colour correctness Permanancy Yellows Cadmium yellow, zinc yellow, and Permanent Chinese yellow Chrome yellow (see chart) Impermanent Blues Milori blue Too much black shade Permanent not green enough Peacock blue, No. 1305 (see chart) Almost correct Impermanent Peacock blue, oo (see chart) Almost correct Impermanent Reds Krapplack No. 1231 Not enough bluish shade Permanent Red, No. 1611 Good bluish shade Fairly Perm. Nacht Rosa (see chart) Perfect purity and shade Impermanent

Table 1: List of permanent and impermanent inks derived from Hübl’s Three-Colour Photography, 190444

Colour Wavelength* Complement Wavelength* Red 656.2 Greenish blue 492.1 Orange 607.7 Blue 489.7 Golden Yellow 585.3 Blue 485.4 Golden Yellow 573.9 Blue 482.1 Yellow 567.1 Indigo-blue 464.5 Yellow 564.4 Indigo-blue 461.8 Greenish yellow 563.6 Violet From 433

Table 2: Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics. *Millionths of a millimetre.45

C Ashleigh Snow, in Some Hints for Artistic Chromatic Work in 1898, recognised the possibility for profit from the three-colour process, while remarking that three-colour work was “mechanical and soulless”. He notes the confusion over the proper use of screens needed for successful work (Figure 17). EJ Wall recommended screens of nathol yellow, cochineal, and “brilliant green” mixed with yellow; and Peter C Duchochois recommended, an orange screen that was reddish for the blue plate, greenish yellow for the red, and a blue-violet for the yellow plate; however, he recommended Mr Carbutt’s ready-made screens. Snow conjectures that: “…the craftsman should select those that seem to his eye best adapted to the spectrum used by him.” He recommends creating an unchanging still life with fake flowers and powder pigments etc. as a standard for testing three-colour separations, preferably arranged in complementary colours. Leon Vidal in Polychrome Impression by the Aid of Photography, 1898 recommends using a chromoscope to produce separation negatives and for viewing negatives before printing.46

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Modern Colour Processes

Figure 18: William Kurtz: Photography in Colours, Taken from Nature by W Kurtz, Madison Square, New York. Printed in Three Colours on a Steam Press. 1893.47

Figure 19: Collotype and Albertype: Used for monochrome reproduction from life and colour reproduction from original artworks. Left: Albertype Company, New York: American Indian and Hawaiian photographs. Portrait of Chief Stinking Bear in Costume with Horn and Feather Headdress, Holding Pipe and Club, 1898. Right: Marcel Duchamp, (1887-1968) The Green Box: La Mariée Mise à Nu par ses Célibataires, Même (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even). Printed by Vigier et Brumssen, Paris, ninety-four collotype plates, 1934.48

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Figure 20: C Anger & Göschl, Vienna: In the Grotto, Four-colour process of a painting by Rud. Roessler, Penrose Annual, 1902-03.49

Figure 21: William Kurtz, American Colortype Company, 1903. Three-colour printing specimens: “We don’t sell Kurtz color plates under any consideration — we sell PRINTING only.”50

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Figure 22: RM Burch: Colour Printing and Colour Printers, 1910.51 Specimen in three-colour collotype, Printed by W&T Gaines, Leeds.

Figure 23: Van Dyck Gravure Company. New York, 1913-14.52 Nature Study by instantaneous colour photography, Negatives by Polchrome Company London, New York.

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Figure 24: Autotype Company Limited, Penrose Annual, 1928.53 Fruit Study, three colour cabro photograph, blocks and printing by Pitman Press, Bath.

Figure 25: SADAG Geneva and Paris: Colour Photogravure, Penrose Annual, 1930.54 A Happy Family printed direct from Tri-Chrome One-exposure Camera Negatives. Inks: Stella-Bartlett Gravure Inks Limited, Geneva and Willsden.

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Joseph Albert (1825-1886), who had been successfully producing three-colour printings with collotype using Vogel’s sensitisers since 1874, proposed a collaboration with du Hauron; however, du Hauron chose to collaborate with Guisac-Andre in Toulouse instead. Léon Vidal in Paris began combining chromolithography and Woodburytype, and Anger & Göschl in Vienna and Goupil in Paris produced four- and five-colour zincographs from separations and three-colour collotypes (Figure 20). Meanwhile, Emil Ulrich and Enrst Vogel in Berlin produced four-colour collotypes adding a black keyplate; Kurtz in New York offered to buy this latter process and adapt it to halftone relief printing. E Vogel travelled to New York and an in 1893, with Kurtz, produced the first three-colour halftones using a single line screen. They apparently startled the world of photoengraving by publishing on the frontispiece of The Engraver and Printer of Boston an engraved colour print entitled: Photography in Colours, Taken from Nature by W Kurtz, Madison Square, New York. Printed in Three Colours on a Steam Press (Figure 18). By contrast, also in 1893 L’Illustration in Paris produced its first colour illustration by a stipple engraving. On the strength of this technique Kurtz established the American Colortype Company of New York (Figure 21). E Vogel’s approach is distinctive, as he sought filters for separation that were complementary to the best inks available, rather than the best filters and unbalanced inks.55

It was Poitevin’s hunt for a repeatable non-fading colour photograph that resulted in carbon print and collotype techniques. His collotype emulsion consisted of “albumen, fibrine, gum Arabic, gelatine,” mixed with potassium bichromate; spread on a lithographic stone, metal, glass or wood. Light exposure hardens the emulsion and unexposed areas are cleared with water. His Carbon Process patent of 1855 produced only line work; as it developed the process produced a pseudo-halftone attributable to the carbon particles. In 1864, Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) introduced ready-made carbon tissues in black, sepia, purple and brown. Photographers activated the tissues by immersing them in bichromate of potash, temporarily attached to a support until the gelatine dissolved, then transferred to moistened paper and the support removed. Image development could not be observed so Swan developed the first actinometer. Swan produced an edition of one thousand prints of David Octavius Hill’s (1802- 1870) painting of The Formation of the Free Church in Scotland. The Autotype Company purchased Swan’s patent and marketed tissues in thirty colours. Autotype implies a high level of mechanisation; it was very much a manual art, taking several days to produce a print. It was practised well into the twentieth century, evolving into a mechanical three- colour technique (Figure 24).56

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Walter Bentley Woodbury (1834-85) in 1864 created a continuous tone photomechanical relief technique. A photographic gelatine relief is pressed into a block of lead, the impression filled with coloured gelatine and printed. Woodbury claimed the he could print up to twelve thousand impressions. Despite its fine definition, its intricacies made it unsuitable for book and periodical publication.57 While Talbot endeavoured to refine his Photoglyphy process, Paul Pretsch (1808-73) from the Imperial Printing Establishment in Vienna had advanced the technique establishing the Photogalvanographic Company in England in 1856. Photogravure used a mixture of bichromate of potassium, silver, and gelatine, which when exposed becomes swollen, and is then cleared with water (Figure 31). The silver causes a grain and on drying the gelatine reticulates. The surface is duplicated with a rubber mould, and a copper plate electrotyped. It could print editions of five hundred; its major advantage was the repeatable production of plates from a master. The first photoengraved book was Pretsch’s Photographic Art Treasures, or Nature and Art Illustrated by Art and Nature, 1856. The method was revolutionary even though production took six weeks per plate; this was an improvement to the several years required for a monumental engraving. The process was not perfect and required retouching by fine engravers. In 1857, Lewis & Bohm coloured photogravures in a Baxter manner, and from the early days of photogravure, plates were coloured à la poupée.58

Karel Klíč (1841-1926) provided the next improvement to photogravure. A carbon tissue is manufactured, a plate is dusted as in aquatint, the tissue is applied by squeegee to the plate, followed by etching, and printing. From 1880, Leon Warnerke (1837-1900) simplified the process by manufacturing silver bromide tissues. In 1890, the process achieved high repeatability with its application to rotary presses. Rotary techniques were used successfully for line work from 1877. Klíč established the Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Company in London in 1895 with Samuel Fawcett and in New York the Vandyke Gravure Company emulated the method (Figure 23).59

Gamble in Photographic Processes of Today, 1895 lamented the demise of etching skill with the end of the bitumen process; its replacement by an enamel process using bichromated fish glue dyed with aniline with on zinc, brass, or copper plates could be etched in one go. However, by The Year’s Progress in Process Work 1915, he was describing the transfer of type photographically to gravure plates and the demise of letterpress by photogravures due to reduced costs and despite its poor registration. Fred Thevoz of SADAG Geneva in Colour Photogravure, 1926 claimed to have

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produced three-colour photogravures on a rotary press as early as 1913 by but was hindered by the First World War. He noted the benefits of photogravure over lithography and letterpress: half the production time, no machining, no make ready; fast drying permitting the use of three machines in succession, with no need to stop presses; retouching on cylinders, the ability to adjust ink strength, to step and repeat; flexibility in paper stocks, no size limit, machines can be run by men with experience in other presses; no atmospheric difficulties and, most of all, cheaper (Figure 25). He considered rotogravure the only practical three-colour process, but recognises offset lithography is looming threat: “It will be of great help if masking could be substituted for colour retouching, but this would involve photometric control.” Kipphan in 2000 remarked that gravure is primarily used for “high-circulation, high-quality products” such as magazines, catalogues, metal foils; transparent films, carrier bags; security papers, stamps and bank notes. Plans by Hannanprint to install the first gravure presses in Australia after many decades were shelved in 2010, because: “…run lengths had fallen and were getting shorter…” said chief executive Stephen Anstice.60

Gamble in 1920 reported an “epoch-making” event that would lead to the demise of the centuries-old tradition of relief and intaglio printing; a strike at the Literary Digest and Scientific American. “They decided to call in the aid of the typewriter and the lithographer. “The ‘copy’ was type-written, made up into pages with spaces left for illustrations, and reproduced by photolithography.” “Relegating to the scrap heap…” the stereotype and electrotype, newspaper and magazine rotaries, and letterpress. He predicted that press photographs will be “…flashed over the wires and reproduced instantly at the other end as a printing surface.” Niépce experimented with photolithography and later Dr Andrew Fyfe (1792-1861) created an image photographically on stone. Lemercier also produced halftones based on the bitumen process. Poitevin’s collotype is derived from the observation that bichromated gelatine becomes insoluble on exposure to light but is also water-repellent so unexposed areas would repel ink. John Osborne (1828-1902) improved photolithography by creating a transfer paper coated with bichromated gelatine; as did Henry James (1803-1877) for zinc plates. James produced a facsimile of the Domesday book in photozincography in 1861, previous letterpress editions having lacked the verisimilitude valued by scholars.61

In photozincography a negative is taken with wet collodion from an original, zinc plates are sensitised with egg and bichromate of potassium, the negative is contacted with the plate and exposed. The plate is rolled with photo transfer ink, washed and the unexposed

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albumen washes away, the image is intensified with ink and the plate is slightly etched. EA Carnell in Practical Notes on Photo-Lithography, 1895 felt that if making a transfer paper was “too much trouble”, Albert, Husnik, and Jaffe’s transfer paper could be purchased from Penrose. Charles Harrap in 1911 said of offset lithography: “In carrying the matter in colour printing it may be said at the outset that up to the present, planographic methods have not been eminently successful in producing three-colour prints.” EC Harrington in The Advantages of Photolithography, 1928 remarked that the camera was an indispensable tool: “The reproduction of coloured subjects by the photo- litho-offset method is receiving a certain amount of attention, and some of the results thus far obtained not only bear favourable comparison with reproductions produced by older methods, but in many instances are vastly superior.”62 Thevoz in A Comparison of Printing Processes, 1932 recognised that the transition of lithography to an offset technique would be straightforward as:

Offset in its principles and its manipulations, being based on lithography, has had the benefit of staffs already experienced in the work, whilst the rotogravure process has had to create new staffs for the various manipulations, such as electro-deposition, polishing photographic transferring and etching, without counting the complication arising from the inks and the printing.63

Around 1870, Joseph Albert’s Albertype improves Poitevin’s collotype process, by solving the peeling gelatine problem with grained glass, and three-colour collotypes were soon undertaken internationally (Figure 19 and Figure 22).64 Glass plates are ground with emery and washed with silicate of potash to help adhesion. Bichromated gelatine is flowed over the plate then heated in an oven, a negative is exposed to it by sunlight, and finally in darkroom it is washed then hardened with alum. The surface is flooded with ammonia, glycerine, nitrate of lime, and water; then charged with collotype ink. The Photochromatic Print Company attempted four colour collotypes. Ernest Edwards (1837-1903) made the improvement of hardening the emulsion with chrome alum and using pewter plates to increase the run. Despite its high fidelity, it was a difficult process, requiring skilled craftmen. Gamble notes that humidity caused dimensional instability of the emulsion, and Holzhausen and Wetherman in Hints on Proving Collotype Plates, 1895 explain: “The whole secret of success in collotype printing lies in constant practice.”65 Gamble commented:

None of the photomechanical processes depending on fatty inks gives results so nearly approaching the character of the original photograph than does collotype. Prints of singular beauty can be produced with a reasonable

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degree of certainty if sufficient care is taken in the preparation and treatment of the printing plate.66

DA Spencer and HD Murray in Two Chemists Look at the Colour Printing Industry, 1936 noted that, of “half-tone, litho, gravure, and collotype”, the latter two continuous tone methods provided the best results and were the least used. They augured future issues that “militate against successful colour printing”: the need to colour correct for ink deficiency, maintaining register, maintaining colour balance, and conservative colour choices in inks to eliminate retouching.67

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Colour Halftone Technique

Figure 26: Stephen H Horgan: Half-Tone and Photomechanical Processes, 1913.68 Wavy-line screen by A Dargarvel of London.

Figure 27: Stephen H Horgan: The First Dated and Published Halftone and how it was made, Penrose Annual, 1937. Shantytown, New York, The First Published Half-tone. Reproduction in facsimile, without retouching of any kind, from a newspaper, the New York Graphic, March 4, 1880.69 Editorially the Daily Graphic said of this halftone, ‘We have dealt heretofore with pictures made with drawings or engravings. Here we have one direct from nature…. We are still experimenting with it, and feel confident that our experiments will in the long run result in success, and that pictures will eventually be regularly printed in our pages direct from photographs without the intervention of drawing.’

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Figure 28: CG Zander: Photo-Trichromatic Printing, in Theory and Practice, 1896.70

Figure 29: Burman Norton: The Hunting Girl, Penrose Annual, 1904-05.71 Three-colour blocks (Max Levy’s 200 ruling), from watercolour sketch by permission of Stafford & Company Netherfield, Nottinghamshire.

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Figure 30: The Saturday Evening Post: George Horace Lorimer and Norman Rockwell, 1926.72

“Without the half-tone block three-colour photography could never have been more than a laboratory experiment,” Gamble asserted in 1928.73 Continuous tone plates could not run simultaneously with letterpress, although some printers placed gravure presses in-line with letterpresses. Talbot’s Photoglyphy evolved into a Blake-like surface technique mounted to the height of type matrices. FE Ives’s friend Friedrich Wilhelm von Egloffstein (1824-1885) took the first step in 1864 with a wavy-line screen, a process disappearing without success (Figure 26). Around 1878, FE Ives manufactured mechanical halftones by pressing a gelatine relief against a rubber sheet of pyramidal points. Charles-Guillaume Petit’s (d1921) “similigravure” patent is an analogous process, a relief image pressed into plaster then cross-cut by a V-tool in an engraving machine. Modern halftone began with Georg Meisenbach’s (1841-1912) glass single-line screen, which he rotated on contact plates to create the halftone. He and Josef Ritter von Schmaedel (1847-1923) perfected the technique and patented it as Autotypie and opened a firm in Munich firm and in London with Swan.74

Around 1886, Ives evolved the mechanical process to an optical one “…in which transparent apertures were made to act like pinhole cameras to produce an image of the lens aperture…”. Stephen Henry Horgan (1854-1941), art director for the New York Herald, claimed priority – in 1876 he had used cardboard pierced with holes. Horgan

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published the world’s first halftone in The New York Daily Graphic, 1880 (Figure 27). The conversion of a continuous tone image to dots of varying sizes allows a line process that works in conjunction with letterpress. Ives comments on the halftone process: “In the early days of halftone, one wood engraver said he wanted to murder me for virtually destroying the industry he had chosen for his life occupation; but he afterwards became my friend.” Ives’s optical V-line was not as successful as the mechanical V-line, but it had one advantage: flaws could be corrected.75 He notes:

Variations in screen distance and size and shape of lens aperture and multiple exposures with different ‘stops’ in the lens gave such control that compensation could often be made for defects in the character of graduation in the original photograph. In my own hands, this control was so perfect that everything was done in the negative making, but for many years in the hands of other people, resort was had to the services of a ‘fine-etcher’ to correct in the plates faults introduced in the negative making, and the ‘fine-etcher’ was the highest paid man in the plant.76

Early halftone technique involved two single-line screens, one straight and one diagonal, the latter rotated to provide the third angle. Continuous tone gravure and halftone competed briefly in the early century, halftone eventually dominating from the rise of offset lithography. Max Levy & Company of Philadelphia from 1890 was the main supplier screens world-wide (Figure 29), Sipley recounts in A Half Century of Colour, 1950, a Levy sales book: “An order of April 16, 1895, from AD Willis of Wanganui, New Zealand, included a request, ‘send catalogue and some three-colour prints.’” Albert patented an improvement in which the screen was rotated at angles of thirty degrees behind red, green, and violet filters to prevent moiré. Horgan supplied three- and four- colour plates to publishers William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) and James Gordon Bennett (1841-1918). When George Horace Lorimer (1867-1937) became the editor of The Saturday Evening Post he revived in fortunes with three-colour wrap in 1889 that continued till 1926 when four-colour was implemented (Figure 30).77

Gamble in 1895 remarked on the “considerable attention” given to Photo-Chromotypy (Letterpress) despite its experimental status. He advised that accurate registration was of key importance and that inks should represent “no other colour than their own”. He saw ink standardisation a must, special inks were now for sale along with Photochromic Colour Screens.78 Levy in Reflections on Present-Day conditions on Photo-Mechanical Work, 1916 remarked that: “About 1895 Gerland patented his ‘High-light’ process, the English rights of which were acquired by the Meisenbach Company, of London, at the same time numerous other methods were developed which would yield negatives of

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higher contrast than currently employed.” However re-etching was sustained because of its predictability.79 Gamble described the three-colour halftone procedure in 1895:

With the violet screen a negative is made upon an ordinary gelatino-bromide plate, and the block subsequently made form this negative should be printed in yellow ink. From the green a negative is made on an orthochromatic plate, such as Lumière’s, Edwards’, or Ilford. The block from this is printed in red ink. With the red screen a rapid gelatino-bromide plate bathed in cyanine solution and dried is used. The resulting negative gives a block which must be printed in blue ink.80

CG Zander, in Three Colours Versus Four, 1898 felt that advocates of the four-colour process (CMYK) were growing smaller in number. He did not accept the necessity of a black keyplate, attributing the approach of insiting on this to letterpress printers who lacked the colour skills of lithographers. A stalwart of the three-colour synthesis principal, he attributes any failure to poor application of the theory. He wrote: “A perfect set of three colour blocks is the blockmaker’s pons asinorium, and does not want any tampering or improving with a fourth key-block.” What is needed is better communication between blockmaker and printer to produce correct blocks, inks, register, and ink distribution. In Yellow, Red, and Blue, 1899 Zander says “To state the matter concisely; the printing colours should be the complementary colours of the three colours (Spectrum Red, Green and Violet), obtained by the analysis of the object and recorded by means of sensitive plates and colour filters. These last-named colours … are the three fundamental colour sensations of the Young–Helmholtz theory of vision.” (Figure 28)81

Zander gave more detail; the red negative should cut green and violet and print in “what scientists call cyan-blue”; green cuts red and violet, printing in a rhodamine; and violet cuts red and green and prints in yellow “…there are no permanent Reds or Blues of a corresponding hue to take the place of these fugitive aniline pigments…”82 Pigment variations have led to much “confusion and multiplicity” of inks from various blockmakers and the belief that red, yellow and blue are the appropriate printing colours.83 In The Complementary Colour Reproduction Process, 1906 he noted that the extinction of chromolithography had not eventuated, despite the development of panchromatic dry plates sensitive to the whole spectrum; the study of filters and inks; sharper halftone blocks; and colour correction through retouching. He recognised the fine-etcher’s impact on verisimilitude:

It his business to remedy the incongruity of the filters and printing inks, to correct photographic errors, and to make the best of the limited colour-range available in three-colour work, in order to approach as near a facsimile of the original by hand work, as is possible in the process; his importance in the

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production of three-colour half-tone blocks is fully recognized, and quite a generation of highly-trained and skilled fine-etchers has grown up. As a matter of fact if it had not been for the fine-etcher three-colour half-tone printing process could never have attained the commercial importance it has done.84

Alfredo Mangiagalli’s A Practical Process of Three-Colour Etching, 1909 describes his methods of re-etching to achieve highlights, starting with yellow, then red, finally blue. “I prepare plates to a certain point and then take a proof from the yellow and red plate. The blue plate is etched in the same way as the others and then a complete proof is pulled in order to see the result of the work done up to now.” In the The Artists’ Department 1910 Hazlitt Gilmour remarked that better artists modified plates the least. Joseph Goodman in The Latest Multi-Colour Conquest of the Graphic Arts and Crafts, 1910 remarks that roll-fed multi-colour lithographic presses for paper and textile: “…alone made the ‘high-light half-tone’ possible whilst its powers of ‘unlimited duplication’ of an original by the transfer process placed it far ahead of anything that rival processes could offer as an equivalent.” Gamble in 1910 was dubious about the possible fusion of the blockmaker and printer: “Our view is the old fashioned one of ‘every man to his trade’ and ‘let the cobbler stick to his last.” Whereas WM Noble in The Future of Three-Colour Printing, 1911 advocated the conflation of printer and block maker: “In conclusion let me repeat that I am strongly of opinion that colour process-houses that do not print, and colour printing houses that do not ‘process’, are doomed; colour reproduction houses that do both print and make will alone survive.”85

Oft forgot is that Newton’s experiments aimed to remove chromatic aberration from lenses to improve telescopes. Different light wavelengths have different focal lengths. John Dollond (1706-1761) created lenses of crown and of flint glass, one convex and one concave, which improved chromatic aberrations. Perfecting these remained an issue for trichromatic printing, as each colour separation required focusing to a different focal length. Reginald S Clay in Variation in the Size and Positions of the Images in Three-Colour Work, 1905 suggested measuring the projected size of the images and re-focusing for each colour and filling the same cell with the liquid filters for each separation. In 1921, Gamble outlined automation in camera work with electric shutters, self-focusing lenses, and auto screen distances: “The tendency now is to reduce every step of the half-tone process to a mechanical uniformity. That is all to the good, for after all half-tone is a photo-mechanical process and may as well be worked as such.”86

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Corporatisation and Standardisation of Process

Figure 31: Waterlow and Sons Limited, London: Heliochrome (photogravure) reproduction photographed direct, 1899.87

Figure 32: Take a Kodak with you. The Kodak Girl. Australasian Photographic Review, Lithograph, 1911.88

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Figure 33: Frederick Eugene Ives: On Some Limitations of the Trichromatic Process, Penrose Annual 1904-05.89 A: we have printing colours with sharply defines absorption bands, touching each other. B: we have printing colours showing the same total absorption, but with a graduated overlap.

Figure 34: Lionel Lindsay: Two unidentified women in a garden wearing dresses and shawls, Autochrome, c1906.90

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Figure 35: CE Kenneth Mees and AJ Newton, The Photography of Coloured Objects, 1909.91 Tricolour sensation curves.

Figure 36: CE Kenneth Mees and AJ Newton, The Photography of Coloured Objects, 1909. Top: Three sharp cut filters for image recording. Bottom: Project filters with a slight crossover.92

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Figure 37: Penrose Annual Advertorial: Two useful aids to the Colour Worker, 1913.93

Figure 38: Left: National Geographic: Autochrome, the first natural color photograph to appear. Flower garden in Ghent, Belgium, published on page 49 of the July 1914 issue.94 Right: Helen M Murdoch: Portrait study, Autochrome, Penrose Annual, 1911-12. Inks by Shackwell, Edwards & Company Limited.95

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Figure 39: R Namias: On Orthochromatizing & Panchromatizing Gelatino-Bromide Paper, Penrose Annual, 1924. Left: Three-colour print from Pinachrome sensitised negatives. Right: Four-colour print from negatives sensitised with ethyl violet and erythrosine. Inks by Shackell, Edwards & Company Limited.96

Figure 40: Editor of Cine-Kodak News: The Kodacolor Process Explained, Penrose Annual, 1930.97 The Illustrations … give a good idead of the beautiful shades which now can be shown on the screen by the Kodacolor Process for making Moving Pictures in Natural Colours. Inks by Shackell, Edwards & Company Limited.

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Figure 41: DA Spencer: The Vivex One-Exposure Colour Camera and Notes on Vivex Linked Progress. Penrose Annual, 1935.98

Figure 42: Finlay Company Limited: A Finlay Study in Colour for a Soap Advertisement, Penrose Annual 1934, Reproduced in Three-colour Half-tone by the Grout Engraving Company Limited. Inks by Shackell, Edwards & Company Limited.99

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Figure 43: Dufay-Chromex Ltd: Dufaycolor for the Process Engraver, 1949.100

Niépce died before improving his heliography, though his cousin Able Niépce de Saint Victor achieved his aims with glass plates, albumen and silver nitrate, known as Heliogravure (Figure 31). These were evolved into wet collodion plates by Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) who in 1848 created an emulsion by dissolving guncotton (cotton soaked in nitric and sulphuric acid) in ether and alcohol and then mixed in silver nitrate. These plates had exposures of seconds instead of the minutes of albumen plates. Prepress men favoured collodion emulsion up to the 1920s, each with their own recipes for sensitising it for colour separations. What was sought was: “…a panchromatic sensitizer for collodion emulsion, which combines general sensitiveness with good colour rendering, gives a good half-tone dot and permits of comparatively large apertures in screen work,” says Henry O Klein in The New Sensitizers as Applied to Collodion Emulsion, 1905. CJ Killen in Formulae and the Man, 1920 remarks: “It is the man not the formulae that counts the most … If you have one that works perfectly, stick to it … An expert workman will do better work with inferior tools than a poor workman with the best of tools.” Nevertheless, a dry process was sought in order to move photography away from the studio. This eventuated with the carbon process first described by Gustav Suckow in 1832 and followed in 1871 by the gelatine plates of Richard Leach Maddox

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(1816-1902). The Liverpool Dry plate company was the first company to manufacture plates but it was not a stupendous success.101

George Eastman (1854-1932) led technological democratisation with his philosophy: “You press the button, we do the rest.” After reading about dry plates in the British Journal of Photography he began manufacturing a stripping-film on a paper support that worked on any of the available cameras. Understanding that amateurs did not care about chemistry, he established a photographic finishing business and marketed his cameras to women, recognising their desire to record family events (Figure 32). Later he loaded cameras with one hundred shots on a nitrocellulose support; the user returned the cameras for processing and subsequently received them back reloaded with film; despite the turnaround time it was a great success (Figure 51). Cognisant that research and development was the key to his success, he credited his staff for changing “Kodak Park from an empirical to the scientific path”. He astutely followed the suggestion of Charles Edward Kenneth Mees (1882-1960) to purchase the Wratten and Wainwright Company so that Mees could direct his research laboratory. SB Yerbury, in Collotype for Colour, 1915, bemoaned the loss of the wet plate man: “The fact is the present-day photographer has become a mere tradesman, a finisher-off of the products of the plate and papermaker, and lacks real craftsmanship of the old wet plate men of forty years ago.”102

Desperately required were plates with specific colour sensitivities for colour separations. At the turn of the century Abney, Eder, Ives and others were engaged in the commercial development of orthochromatic (green-sensitive) and isochromatic (orange-sensitive) and panchromatic (full spectral sensitivity) gelatine plates (Figure 39). Ives’s wet collodion photomechanical plates were sensitised with chlorophyll from blue-myrtle and, periwinkle leaves were sensitive to most of the spectrum, but lacked some sensitivity to green light so Ives added a little eosine (red dye). He demonstrated a three-colour print at Philadelphia Novelties Fair in 1885. Ives recognised the aim of colour photography was to produce multiple identical prints and transparencies. While in England working with Cameron Swan (Joseph’s son) establishing the Swan Electric Halftone Engraving Company, he realised that a “simplified process was necessary” that would be “sufficiently simple and cheap”, but his methods did not fulfil this criterion.103

Ives maintained that three-colour processes were only successful when scientific principles were taken into account, after which “compromises” could be made. He was unfamiliar with Maxwell’s colour curves before discovering them in Rood’s Modern Chromatics, and noted that his early experiments were “crude,” achieving success merely

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by “trial and error.” The Modern Chromatics outline of optical mixing was an influence on chromotypogravurists in France and painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Seurat’s pointillism, aiming to represent luminosity, could not simultaneously represent high-key colour and strong contrasts. Ives became aware that Maxwell’s curves are colour mixture curves and not sensation curves, so have a limited gamut. CIE1931 provided a solution, with three imaginary primaries defining the full gamut of human colour vision. Ives maintained that three records must record an overlapping spectrum: red record, from red (750nm) through to green (527nm); green record, from orange (656nm) to green-blue (425nm); and blue record, from green-blue (527nm) to violet (404nm) (Figure 33). Later, Hardy and Wurburg will explain that colour synthesis additively or subtractively, requires “pure colour” filters that absorb or transmit one-third of the spectrum, and not overlapping “spectral analysis” filters. Cones record across the entire spectrum but the retina interpolates to pure colours; if crossover curves are used for colour synthesis, colours are desaturated, as Seurat’s paintings demonstrate. Despite Ives’s opinion to the contrary, retouching and masking is necessary to colour correct images even in our digital age. Three-colour chromolithographers relied, as had Le Blon, on human vision and physical manipulation of media to colour correct an image. Photographic printing processes were yet to achieve this kind of interpolation, as Harry W Pope in The Necessity of Fine Etching in Three-Colour Work, 1896 describes: “…the photographer is not immaculate, and half a dozen operators will give as many differing negatives of the same original … Practical acquaintance—even sight—with half-tone methods of reproduction generally convinces the most inveterate opponent of ‘handwork’ in ‘process’ of the absolute impossibility of getting a facsimile without it, and therefore of the need of the wretched ‘fine etcher’.”104

Friedman declares that the fixation of the Young–Helmholtz theory inhibited progress in colour reproduction, he says: “The very close correspondence, coupled with the hypothetical speculation of the Young–Helmholtz theories, gave rise to the belief that the one was an experimental verification of the other. But this is entirely an illusion.” Printers and photographers made progress on colour verisimilitude empirically. Even König and Abney insisted on colour records matching cone responses; Mees and Newton in The Photography of Coloured Objects, 1909 explains that if you attempt to record a green at 5200 nanometres where the human sensation curves overlap it will produce “greenish white” rather than “pure green” (Figure 35). The solution is to narrow the records, preventing crossover with coloured filters that are as “abrupt as possible” (Figure 36). Mees and Newton’s “abrupt filters” are equivalent to Le Blon’s “mutually exclusive”

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primaries, they note that: “Such filters will not satisfactorily reproduce the spectrum; they will divide it into five sharp and abrupt regions.”105

Early printer-photographer-scientists led the advancement of colour reproduction. As Gamble notes in 1910: “The founders of a firm were often men of artistic or scientific temperament who had a strong inclination to be constantly experimenting to improve their craft and their workmen were encouraged to experiment during slack time.” AJ Bull in An Outline of the Principles of Tri-Colour Printing, 1904 gave a summary of colour printing issues: plates that do not record accurate light intensities; the importance of correct division of the spectrum, finding suitable filters and finding transparent inks of complementary colour; and the need for acceptance of abrupt colour curves and the loss of hue involved. He lamented: “While it is always recommended to work as close as possible to theory, many theories of tri-colour printing break down in practice.” T Thorne Baker in The Ideal Plate for Orthochromatic and Three-Colour Work, 1905 identified that plates should either be of differing maximum sensitivity or have panchromatic and sensitivity across the spectrum; the latter reduces variables, labour, and costs. Alfred Dawson’s notes in The Spectrum and the Dry Plate, 1913: “In the early days the special sensitiveness of any plate was so local that a downright battle had to be fought between the special filters needed and the great inequality of the exposures which followed were great hindrances to the colour branch…. What do you want to print? Answer: Kill it and preserve its exact complementary, making sure with by the spectroscope that not a ray of the printing colour reaches the plate…”.106

In Two Aids for the Colour Block Maker, 1913 Penrose Annual recommended: “The ink control blocks should be put into the chase with the three colour blocks when they are being proved, and that the same amount is used when reproving.” (Figure 37) Gamble in 1921 recognised that automation of camera work using electric timed shutters, self- focusing lenses, and auto screen distances was changing the industry: “The tendency now is to reduce every step of the half-tone process to a mechanical uniformity. That is all to the good, for after all half-tone is a photo-mechanical process and may as well be worked as such.” SE Bottomley in 1926 saw “…that ‘accurate’ and ‘scientific’ methods of photographic practice are replacing the ‘haphazard’ and ‘trial and error’ methods of the past – especially in colour reproduction processes.”107

By 1931 Baker in Colour Measurement in Colour Printing said that “There were days— not so long ago—when the colour printer would not take his filters, his colours, or his inks for granted, he would dye his own filter, and certainly choose his inks on some more

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or less scientific basis. To-day, filters have become standardised, panchromatic plates have become almost ideal as far as their colour-sensitiveness is concerned, and sets of trichromatic inks having measured absorptions have become available.” Gamble in the 1932 said of colour correction: “A colour scale and a grey scale photographed with the original is helpful; so is the plan of looking at the original through viewing filters, which should be so chosen to show darkly what has to be dark on the positives, but this does not help much for the middle and lighter tones.” Fishenden in 1936 believes colorimeters were “not very helpful”; however, by 1939 he had changed his tune:108

In colour work it is not sufficient for an operator to judge whether the negatives in a set are balanced; they must be measured, and photo-electric density meters make this operation automatic. Measurement of colour is more difficult but even this problem has been solved so that any hue may be given graphic expression, or numerical values, automatically.109

H Mills Cartwright in Colour Measurement, 1940 noted that devices like the Lovibond Tintometer red, green, and blue filters are providing graphs allowing convertion of measurements into CIE values. He considered The British Colour Council’s Dictionary of Color Standards, 1934 with CIE measurement and printed in letterpress to be of some aid for colour correction. Finally, WL Rhodes and HB Archer’s An Ink Distribution Meter, 1955 noted that this device saw colour the same in “daylight as in artificial illumination” unlike “two operators who see colours differently … The densitometer is becoming less of a curiosity and more of a tool for controlling colour.”110

Around 1893, John Joly (1857-1933) in Dublin and James William McDonough in Chicago both re-invented du Hauron’s linear screen. McDonough’s experiment used dyed shellac; Joly’s more commercial process was marketed from 1894. König remarks on the flaws: “…the image is not homogeneous, but consists of coloured lines, and has a somewhat irritating effect; …the ruled screens were dear, which is all the more important…” Lipmann suggested a film covered with tiny lenses of three-colours, FN Lancaster suggested splitting the light with a red, green, and blue screen in front of the film, and RE Leisegang suggested using banded filters within lenses. Kodacolor lenticular positive motion film projected through a lens containing three colour filters; but the image was poor. There where innumerable patents and improvements of this process by Kodak and AGFA: Kodacolor motion, 1928; Polaroid Polavsion instant movies, 1977; Polachrome 35mm film, and Sony Trinitron television, 1968. Kodak over many years used the name Kodachrome for a two-colour and a three-colour film; and Kodacolor for lenticular, mosaic, print films, and recently inkjet technology (Figure 40).111

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A paradigm shift away from chromoscopes and one-shot cameras to standardisation and commercialisation of technique occurred with the Lumière Autochrome mosaic film of 1904. It used starch grains dyed red, green, and blue (Figure 34). Like Daguerreotypes, Autochrome’s were one-offs, as duplication requires an exact register of the grains. The Lumière film democratised colour as Eastman had for black and white. Despite the difficulties in reproducing Autochromes, for the first time in history “natural coloured” portraits verging on full verisimilitude began appearing in books and magazines. This film marks the commencement of the information revolution and the modern era of colour. Autochrome is a reversal process in which the red, green, and violet starch grains are reversed by chemical development. The Lumière patent description uses the terms: orange, green, violet, red, yellow, and blue, or “any number of colours”; they were either deliberately ambiguous, or they misunderstood additive and subtractive principles. Other mosaic films are: Dufaycolor of 1908, Agfacolor of 1914, and Finlay Color of 1906; most were in use till the 1940s. Finlay supplied block-out screens for process workers to separate their negatives; to block-out two colours and transmit one (Figure 42). Autochromes by Paul Guillumette of A Ghent Flower Garden, 1914 were published in National Geographic as a display of engraving’s “technical achievement” by publishing a “Natural Colour photograph” (Figure 38). Howard Farmer in Autochrome and Their Reproduction on Paper, 1910 described the main difficulties in the reproduction of autochromes: “1, Structural texture. 2, Strong contrasts with high total differences. 3, Extremely delicate local gradations.” Gamble in 1915 thought Autochrome, Dufay and Paget screen: “…useful to colour engravers as guides for colour effect.” Just as integral Kodachrome was to hit industry, FW Plews wrote in Colour in Newspapers, 1937: “…of my experience of 58 years in photo illustration processes, I consider the Dufay method has the most important bearing on the use of colour in commercial printing, and more particularly colour illustrations in newspapers.” (Figure 43) Mosaic method, is used in cathode ray tubes invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918) in 1897 and liquid crystal displays developed by Tomio Wada for the liquid crystal display pocket calculator in 1973.112

The camera obscura became the chromoscope, then the repeating back and one-shot camera (Figure 41). Friedman classifies colour camera types as follows: Type 1, two or more lenses without beam division; Type 2, two or more lenses behind inclined glass plates; Type 3, a lens in front of beam splitters; Type 4, two or more lenses behind beam splitters; Type 5, divergent lens in front of two or more lenses. Types 1 and 2 are effective for good exposures, but as the three lights have different focal lengths image

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registration is impossible. Types 3, 4 and 5 beam are splitting cameras, they split the light energy in three, leading to differing exposures. Du Hauron’s tripak of sandwiched films is the solution; where the first emulsion is sensitive to blue light, transmitting red and green; the second, sensitive to green transmits red; the last is sensitive to red alone. These films were split apart and processed separately; however, balancing the processing so the three films had the same gamma was an issue. The original Technicolor film was a Bipak and Friedmann says: “It was only after the success achieved by Technicolor, in the late 1920s, that people became conscious that colour reproduction was possible.”113

Pre-press separation negatives were produced with one-shot cameras, by separating integral films or using films shot with three negatives in succession (Figure 12). The Autotype Company produced repeating-backs with built-in colour filters for use on a standard plate camera. A mechanical print could be produced with sensitised pigment paper, exposed using daylight, squeegeed onto celluloid, and transferred and registered on a paper support. In the Cabro method, three bromides are made to reverse the negatives; the bromide and the Cabro films are sandwiched together and exposed. After stripping apart, the Cabros are transferred to paper. Producing separation negatives by direct method required equal densities, grey scales being included for making negatives; so each film for each colour was developed and exposed. Walter Channon in Colour Originals, 1931 notes Autotype’s impact on the graphic arts industry: “To-day there is a hard spirit of commercialization abroad, which requires to see the advertised article portrayed as it actually is, rather than as the artist conceives it.” Gamble in 1931 Three-colour Photography for Reproduction, noted that Autotype Tri-Chrome Cabro and the Colour Photos Ltd Cellophane film superposition process was used to produce printers proofs. Both required large amounts of retouching so the results were considered “fake”.114

Photographers began supplying separated negatives directly to the printer; the downside was that they were not colour balanced for printing inks. In Penrose Annual many calls came over the years for standardisation in inks and filters, but it was not forthcoming. By the 1940s, three-colour carbon prints were used for proofs instead press proofs, Penrose Annual promoted the Vivex system (Figure 41). GH Saxon Mills wrote in Colour Photography, 1933, referring to Colour Photographs Ltd’s Vivex process use of separation negatives and carbon tissue, “In this new and unquestionably perfect colour photography both colour and complete conviction are at last combined, and are no less than an advertising dream come true.” DA Spencer in A Contribution to Colourgravure Technique, 1934 discusses the Vivex process’s elimination of plate etching, instead the

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negatives are retouched, and the reproduction curves of Vivex and gravure plates were found to match. Progressive proofs were undertaken with inks that matched the tissues.115

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The Penultimate Standard

Figure 44: Henry Joy: My Impressions of Kinemacolor, Penrose Annual, 1911-12. Investiture of Prince of Wales at Carnarvon Castle. Marshal Engraving Company, Inks by Shackel, Edwards & Company. Kinemacolour used two colour records, red-orange and blue-green, on consecutive frames. Prizmacolour used it was a duplitized film a red-orange record on one side and a blue-green one on the other.116

Figure 45: TLJ Bentley: The Kodachrome Process, Penrose Annual, 1937.117

Figure 46: Ivan Dmitri: Auto Racing Saturday Evening Post, 29 May 1937. Early reproduction from Kodachrome.

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Figure 47: TLJ Bentley, The Kodachrome Process, 1937.118

Figure 48: Gordon McLeish: Negative/Positive Colour Prints, Penrose Annual, 1959.119 Cover for Woman’s Own, on Ektachrome, gravure reproduction and printing J Arthur Dixon Limited.

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Figure 49: Gordon McLeish: Negative/Postive Colour Prints, Penrose Annual, 1959.120 Dishes by McLeish on Ektacolor Type C print, gravure reproduction and printing J Arthur Dixon Limited.

Figure 50: Gordon McLeish: Negative/Positive Colour Prints, Penrose Annual, 1959.121 African Miner by Adolf Morath on Agfacolor, four-colour halftone blocks by Wace and Company Limited.

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Monopaks were first disclosed in Heinrich Kühn’s (1866-1944) patent in 1891, similar to Tripaks except the films are not separated for processing. The sandwich of sensitised emulsions also filters light. Friedman explains: “The top layer is coloured yellow and is sensitive to the blue. The second layer, coloured cyan, is sensitized for the red. The bottom layer is coloured magenta and is sensitised for the green.” Bela Gaspar developed a commercial film by 1930; Troland at Technicolor creates a blue and red Bipak working in conjunctions with green-sensitive film. Rudolf Fischer (1881-1957) and Hans Siegrist (1885-1959) discovered dye coupling or the chemistry of dye creation in the photographic development. Their film contained emulsion-sensitising dyes and dye couplers: the blue sensitiser yielded a yellow dye, green a magenta, and red cyan, but the dyes tended to leach between layers. Inventors and classical musicians Leopold Mannes (1899-1964) and Leopold Godowsky (1900-1983) were inspired to investigate colour photography after watching the documentary Our Navy in 1917 with its dubious colour rendering from two-colour Prizma Color (Figure 44). Their first multilayer process was two-coloured in red/orange and blue/green. After being cited in EJ Wall’s The History of Three-Color Photography they became aware of Fischer’s couplers and showed new results to Mees, who immediately employed them. Kodak had discovered couplers that would not migrate and Mees planned to market their two-colour film despite their plans for a three-colour version. In the end it was the three-colour version that was manufactured (Figure 45) (Figure 47). The addition of dyes during processing made it a complex process, but the film was of extremely fine grain and has never been imitated. TLJ Bentley in 1937 noted the need for corporatisation: “The process raised problems of emulsion making and coating, of colour sensitizing, of organic chemistry and dye reactions which taxed even the research and manufacturing resources of the Kodak concern, and which no independent inventors could have solved.”122 Mees describes the process:

What happens is that the images on the three layers are first developed, as in a standard black-and-white film, and then converted to colour positives in a sequence of treatment processes. Finally all the silver salts are removed from the layers, so that what is left is the composite image built up from the three superimposed colour part-images.123

Ivan Dmitri (1900-1968) tested the Kodachrome and its suitability for printing with a red racing car shot in 35mm on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1937 (Figure 46). Anton E Bauman published the Leica’s Das Farbige Leica-Buch, 1938 using 35mm film, with blocks made by Brend’amour Simard & Co, Munich. Kodacolor’s colour coupler negative process entered the market in 1941 for amateurs but the colour was not great; it improved later with the inclusion of integrated masks for colour balancing. Agfa was

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selling screen and lenticular films from 1916, when Wilhelm Schneider (1900-1980) was searching for a fine grain black and white film using Siegrist couplers. Management saw his coloured test strips and approved an investigation of a colour film. He solved the dye migration problem by chemically anchoring the dyes to the gelatine, creating reversal and negative films; and printing papers. Agfacolor Neu was launched through documenting the 1936 Olympic swimming events. Amateurs could use it without special skills or equipment, with processing done by Agfa; the press commented was: “…in the future you’ll be snapping in colour.”124

Kodachrome and Agfacolor did not have varied speeds; in prepress, they were used to copy original art and still lives. The corporations supplied data on their films, so user experiment was unnecessary, as with earlier colour processes. Colour separation was achieved with coloured lights rather than with filters, or by treating the transparency as an original. This was an improvement on lenticular and screen plates, which created moirés unless duplicated soft and out of focus; and had poor colour rendering when converted to half tone. TLJ Bentley in the 1937 The Kodachrome Process remarked: “The process is admittedly complex, but its complexity is the concern of the manufacturer; for the user it is simplicity itself.”125 For process workers a paradigm shift had occurred; photography became distinct from prepress technique. Bently says of Kodachrome:

When it later becomes available in the form of large sheets for commercial and publicity photography, the process world will gain an important ally giving colour transparencies ideal in character for process reproduction and allowing the responsible work of colour separation to be done by the process engravers experienced in block making.126

By 1954 the available Integral Tripaks were: Kodachrome, Agfacolor (Figure 50), Ektachrome (Figure 48), Ferraniacolor, Ilford Colour Film, Ansco Color, Gevacolor and two Japanese versions. Fishenden remarked that the colour rendering was good but not accurate from flaws in the magenta and cyan dyes; however, he recognised that this was corrected in Ektacolor (Figure 49).127 Ektacolor prints from Ektachrome could be separated in the conventional manner without colour correction as the film’s orange gelatine support provided the necessary colour masking. DA Spencer in 1951 said of Ektacolor that it:

…not only records the red, green, and blue components of the subject in accordance with the conventional three-colour system of colour photography, but at the same time it produces in the negative two masking images. These masking layers automatically introduce the necessary corrections which must be made for any three-colour process of photography to give accurate hue rendering.128

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Franklin Clapper, at the Third Seminar on Color in Print, 1966 in New York, described a “Kodachrome World” of prepress:

I look at a transparency as set of separations already—not a set of negatives, but positives. I can look at it with a red, green, and blue filter, and I can see some useful details about these separations before I even start. I can see that they are good. There is no highlight detail missing. I can look at it with my eye. I can see that they are in balance.129

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Colour Standards Blackboxed

Figure 51: The Photographic Herald and Amateur Sportsman, 1889.

Niépce, Daguerre and Talbot’s aspiration for the fixation of images from the camera obscura inspired du Hauron and Ives to pursue the fixation of colour images with their variant of the camera obscura, the chromoscope and its offspring the one-shot camera. Eastman’s dry plate photo finishing business led to the standardisation, corporatisation and democratisation of black and white photography’s technique – proverbially, the “You Press the Button, We do the Rest” corporate philosophy. The Lumières undertook the same approach for their Autochrome, which was so successful that it had travelled to Australia and was in use by Lionel Lindsay in the same year of release (Figure 34). Half a century of experiment by printer-photographer-scientists – despite interruption by two world wars – ultimately produced the Kodachrome transparency film with colour resolution and verisimilitude unmatched by any product since. Kodachrome and its sister products remained the de facto colour standard for the next fifty years, and became the standard by which future digital technologies are measured.

Kodachrome blackboxed colour so that technique became secret; users did not need to understand its chemistry or the principle of three-colour synthesis. This chapter’s discussion on Ektachrome film stocks indicates the direction of this thesis’s final chapter. Perfect dyes to produce three-colour records do not exist; Albert supplied a solution in the form of colour masking. Techniques of colour analysis and masking during image scanning are the subjects of the coming chapter. The mathematisation of colour will blackbox colour and it will be shown that this transformation of phenomena will ultimately make colour technique invisible.

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Chapter Five References

1 San Diego University of California, Daguerre Camera Made by Giroux, 1839, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3kpflVw fiE%3D 2 EM Odling and A Smee, Memoir of the Late Alfred Smee Frs (London: George Bell & Sons, 1878) 217. 3 RB Fishenden, “Acknowledgements” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1938). J Tschichold, "Clay in the Potter's Hand," The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1949). B Warde, “Apprentice Training in Typography,”Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1935). Warde, “What Does Modern Mean in Typography,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1936). Warde, “The Oxford Lectern Bible,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1937). Warde, “Size of Print,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1938). Warde, “The Platform of Print,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1940). Warde, “Improving the Compulsory Book,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1950). Warde, “Impressions of the Typesetting Industry in America,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1951). Warde, “The Pencil Draws a Viscous Circle,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1953). Warde, “George Macy and the Limited Editions Club,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1954). Warde, “In Memoriam RB Fishenden.” Warde, “A New Light on Typographic Legibility,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956). Warde, “The Canterbury Portent,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. LI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1957). Warde, “Australian Rendezvous,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. Delafons Allan, vol. 53 (London: Lund Humphries, 1959). S Morison, “Note on the Garamond Type,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1923). Morison, “Printing in France,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1923). Morison, “The Type of Aldine Poliphilus,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1924). Morison, “A Right Spirit in Publishing,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1924). L Moholy-Nagy, “Paths to the Unleashed Colour Camera,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1937). Moholy-Nagy, “Painting with Light – a New Medium of Expression,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1939).

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4 CG Zander, “Photo-Mechanical Colour Printing V. Chromo-Lithography,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XIV (London: Percy Lund Humphries & Co for AW Penrose & Co, 1909-10) 61. W Gamble, “The Year’s Progress in Colour Work, 1909-10,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XIV (London: Percy Lund Humphries & Co for AW Penrose & Co, 1909-10) 10. HW Bretherick, “The Coming Race: A Review of Some Possibilities,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVI (London: Percy Lund-Humphries & Co for AW Penrose & Company, 1910-11) 65-66. Bretherick, “The Coming Race: A Review of Some Possibilities,” 65-66. 5 AJ Newton, “Mechanization and Quality,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1932) 111. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Review, 1951,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1951) 6-7. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1956,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956) 8. 6 RS Hutchings, “Editorial Commentary,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. LI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1957) 12. 7 L Moholy-Nagy, “Paths to the Unleashed Colour Camera,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1937). 8 SH Horgan, Horgan’s Half-Tone and Photomechanical Processes (Chicago: Inland Printer Company, 1913) 89. 9 (J)N Niépce and San Diego University of California, View from Niepce’s Window at Gras. First Photograph, 1826, Photo-engraving, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3kpflVw dCw%3, ^ june 2009. 10 WHF Talbot, Film National Museum of Photography, and Television (Great Britain), and San Diego University of California, Talbot’s Earliest Surviving Paper Negative: Latticed Window, Lacock Abbey, 1835, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3goeF59f yI%3D, 12 March 2010. 11 WHF Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman & Co., 1844). 12 JM Eder, History of Photography (New York: Dover Publications, 1978) 8-14. V Finlay, Colour: Travels through the Paintbox (London: Hodder & Stoughton Sceptre, 2002) 8- 14. A Varichon, Colors: What They Mean and How to Make Them (New York: Abrams, 2007) 135. H Gernsheim and A Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, [2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969) 20-35. M R Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science, 4th Edition ed. (Amsterdam; London: Focal, 2007) 20-35. LJ Schaaf, Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 23-26.

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13 Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 27-31, 803. RM Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing in association with Adam Hilger, 1910 & 1983) 220. Gernsheim and Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era 28, 36-50, 54. Niépce and University of California, View from Niepce’s Window at Gras. First Photograph. (J)N Niépce, Cardinal D’amboise. Pulled 1827 from 1826 Plate., 1826, Photo-engraving, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3kpflVw dCw%3D. Eder, History of Photography 208-28, 315, 19. 14 Gernsheim and Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era 61-64, 357-58. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 28, 55. HF Talbot, “Note Respecting a New Kind of Sensitive Paper,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Copyright 1837 The Royal Society (1837). Schaaf, Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography 39-40, 95, 131, 40- 41. Eder, History of Photography 316-17, 568. WHF Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969). A Atkins, Photographs of British Algae. Cyanotype Impressions,1843-53). SH Steinberg and J Trevitt, Five Hundred Years of Printing, New ed. (London New Castle, DE: British Library; Oak Knoll Press, 1996) 138-39. MJ Nye, Electrolysis, 2003, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t124.e0215, 16. HKipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables (Berlin; London: Springer, 2001) 1039. 15 Gernsheim and Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era 358-59. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 134. 16 JFW Herschel and Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, Sheet of Experimental Photographs of the Spectrum, 1841-2, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3goeV57 eSQ%3D. 17 RWG Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour, Wiley-IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology, 6th ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004) 6. 18 R Emro, Engineering’s Rick Johnson Helps Museum Apply a Gallery of Technology to Authenticate Art Masterpieces, 2008, Available: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/jan08/engart.re.html, 22 September 2008.

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26 FE Ives, “Photochromoscopic Aparatus,” ed. United States Patent and Trade Mark Office (United States: 1900), vol. 27 Ives, “Photochromoscopic Aparatus.” 28 FE Ives and Spira Collection, Ives’s Kromskop Triple View Three-Color Camera and Viewer 1900, 2011, The Spira Collection, Available: www.spiracollection.com. 29 DA Spencer, “The Taylor-Hobson (Vivex System) One-Shot Camera,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1936). 30 LD Du Hauron and George Eastman House, Still Life with Rooster and Parrot, 1869-1879, ARTstor, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8D1Efjk2MjY5MTs4YVN7R3IgWXktfQ %3D%3D http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gseV5 %2BeSQ%3D http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3gofV57 eCk%3D http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8DVEZjI%2FJjs0IjZUej54RnorVXklcg% 3D%3D. 31 LW Sipley, A Half Century of Color (New York: Macmillan, 1951). 32 AJ Bull, “An Outline of the Principles of Tri-Colour Printing,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. An Illustrated Review of the Graphic Arts. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble (London: Penrose & Company, 1904-5). 33 A Hübl and HO Klein, Three-Colour Photography: With Special Reference to Three-Colour Printing and Similar Processes (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1915). 34 SE Shepherd, “Photography of Colour,” Penrose Annual: International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble (London: Northwood, 1899) 13-16. 35 ABKlein, “The New Colour Photography and the Art of Painting,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1929) 33. Friedman, History of Color Photography 13. 36 Eder, History of Photography 642, 648-649. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 64, 89. FE Ives, The Autobiography of an Amateur Inventor (Philadelphia: 1928) 33-38. 37 Sipley, A Half Century of Color 6. LD du Hauron, Les Couleurs en Photographie; Solution Du Problème (Paris: A Marion, 1869). Josef Maria Eder, History of Photography (New York: Dover Publications, 1978) 642-44. WT Hanson, “Colour Photography: From Dream, to Reality, to Commonplace,” Pioneers of photography: their achievements in science and technology, ed. Eugene and SPSE – the Society for Imaging Science and Technology Ostroff (Springfield, Virginia and Boston, Massachusetts: SPSE – The Society for Imaging Science and Technology; Distributed by Northeastern University Press, 1987). RA Sobieszek, Charles Cros, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Alcide Ducos du Hauron, Two Pioneers of Color Photography: Cros & Du Hauron, The Sources of Modern Photography (New York: Arno Press, 1979). 38 Sipley, A Half Century of Color 6-9.

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77 Other early users: Angerer & Göschl, Husnik and Vilim, Meisenbach and Riffarth, James Waterhouse and AW Turner, and Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, Phototype Engraving Company, Chicago; American Colortype Company, Chicago; Chicago Colortype Company; Photo Colortype Company, Chicago; Osgood Engraving Company, Chicago; Moss Colotype Company, Chicago Sipley, A Half Century of Color 25-27, 72. Eder, History of Photography 646-47, 52-55. M Levy, “Screens for Three-Colour Work,” Penrose Annual: International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble (London: Northwood, 1898) 13-15. Gamble, “Photographic Processes of Today,” 7-8. 78 Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables 90. Jennings, “Frederic Eugene Ives: A Little Tribute to a Great Inventor.” Ives, The Autobiography of an Amateur Inventor 49-50. Gamble, “Fifty Years of Half-Tone,” 15-16. Horgan, “The Beginnings of Halftone,” 93-94. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 233. Demhardt, “Friedrich Wilhelm Von Egloffstein, the Ives-Expedition to the Grand Canyon (1857- 58), and the First Relief Shaded Maps of a Portion of the United States.” Charles Guillaume Petit, “Process Engraving,” Google Patents, ed. United States Patent Office (United States: 1904), vol. 79 Max Levy, “Reflections on Present-Day Conditions on Photo-Mechanical Work,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXI (London: AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1916) 28-30. 80 Editor, ed., Penrose Annual. Process Work Year Book (London: Penrose & Company The Photo Process Stores, 1895) 10-11. 81 William Gamble, “The Year’s Progress in Process, 1911-12,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVII (London: AW Penrose and Company Limited, 1911-12) 9. CG Zander, “Three Colours Versus Four,” Penrose Annual: International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble (London: Northwood, 1898) 55-56. CG Zander, “Yellow, Red and Blue,” Penrose Annual: International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble (London: Northwood, 1899) 17-19. 82 Zander, “Yellow, Red and Blue,” 17-19. 83 Zander, “Yellow, Red and Blue,” 17-19. CG Zander, “The Complementary Colour Reproduction Process,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. An Illustrated Review of Thr Graphic Arts. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XI (London: Penrose & Company, 1905-6) 9. 84 Zander, “The Complementary Colour Reproduction Process,” 9.

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97 Editor of Cine-Kodak News, “The Kodacolor Process Explained,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930) 93-95. 98 DA Spencer, “The Vivex One-Exposure Colour Camera and Notes on Vivex Linked Progress,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1935). 99 Finlay Company Limited, “A Finlay Study in Colour for a Soap Advertisment, Penrose Annual 1934, Reproduced in Three-Colour Half-Tone by the Grout Engraving Company Limited. Inks by Shackell, Edawards & Company Limited,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1934). 100 Advertisement Dufay-Chromex Ltd, “Dufaycolor for the Process Engraver,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1949). 101 Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 27-31. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble 220. Gernsheim and Gernsheim, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era 36-47. Niépce and University of California, View from Niepce’s Window at Gras. First Photograph. Niépce, Cardinal D’amboise. Pulled 1827 from 1826 Plate. Klein, “The New Sensitizers as Applied to Collodion Emulsion,” 68. CJ Killen, “Formulae and the Man,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1920) 11-13. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 29-34. Hannavy, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography 55-56, 270, 438-39. Edward John Wall, Carbon Printing, 6th ed. (London: Hazell, Watson, & Viney Limited, 1902). 102 Hannavy, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography 463-65. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 34-36. HT Clarke, Charles Edward Kenneth Mees 1882-1960, 1971, Available: http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=MEMOIRS_M. SG Yerbury, “Collotype for Colour,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited for AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1915) 87. 103 Ives, The Autobiography of an Amateur Inventor 33-38.

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104 FE Ives, “The Optics of Trichromatic Photography,” Selected Papers on Colorimetry- Fundamentals. SPIE Milestone Series; V. Ms 77, ed. D L MacAdam (Bellingham, Washington, USA: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1993) 53-55, 127-33. ON Rood and F Birren, Modern Chromatics; Students’ Text-Book of Color, with Applications to Art and Industry (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1879 & 1973) 205-10. Norma Broude, “New Light on Seurat’s “Dot”: Its Relation to Photo-Mechanical Color Printing in France in the 1880’s,” The Art Bulletin 56.4 (1974). Rood and Birren, Modern Chromatics; Students’ Text-Book of Color, with Applications to Art and Industry 39. J Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993) 176. AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg, “The Theory of Three-Colour Reproduction,” Optical Society of America 27.7 (1937). HW Pope, “The Necessity of Fine Etching in Three-Colour Work,” The Process Year Book an Illustrated Review of All Photo-Mechanical Processes, Penrose’s Annual (London: Penrose and Company, 1896) 14, 16. 105 Mees and Newton, The Photography of Coloured Objects 57-59. Friedman, History of Color Photography 31, 135-38. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 19. C Mortimer, “An Account of Mr James Christopher Le Blon’s Principles of Printing, in Imitation of Painting, and of Weaving Tapestry, in the Same Manner as Brocades,” Philosophical Transactions, 1683-1775 37 (1731). 106 Gamble, “The Year’s Progress in Colour Work, 1909-10,” 2. Bull, “An Outline of the Principles of Tri-Colour Printing,” 113-20. TT Baker, “The Ideal Plate for Orthochromatic and Three-Colour Work,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. An Illustrated Review of the Graphic Arts. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XI (London: Penrose & Company, 1905-6). A Dawson, “The Spectrum and the Dry Plate,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited for AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1913-14) 33-36. 107 Penrose Annual Advertorial, “Two Aids for the Three-Colour Block Maker,” 165. SE Bottomley, “The Development of Photographic Processes in the Printing and Allied Trades,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1926) 39-43. 108 TT Baker, “Colour Measurement in Colour Printing,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1931) 151-53. Gamble, “The Editor’s Review, 1932,” 10. RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1936,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1936) 7. 109 RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1939,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1939) 6.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 219

Chapter Five References

110 WL Rhodes and HB Archer, “An Ink Distribution Meter,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1955) 94-96. H Mills Cartwright, “Colour Measurement,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1940) 118-20. British Colour Council, The British Colour Council Dictionary of Colour Standards: Adopted by the British Standards Institution as British Standard No. 543-1934, 2 v in case vols. (London, 1934). 111 Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 29, 88, 93, 319, 695. König and Wall, Natural-Color Photography ... Translated from the German, with Additions, Original Tests and Experiments, etc., by EJ Wall, Frps ... With Color-Chart, Test-Results, and Diagrams 2. Eder, History of Photography 660-62. Friedman, History of Color Photography 214-48. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 21-22. Kodak, Kodak Revolutionizes the Inkjet Industry, 2006, Available: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2709&pq- locale=en_US&gpcid=0900688a80671462, 1 August 2011. 112 Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 7, 129. Christie, “Lumière Process of Color Photography.” Eder, History of Photography 660-62. König and Wall, Natural-Color Photography ... Translated from the German, with Additions, Original Tests and Experiments, etc., by EJ Wall, Frps ... With Color-Chart, Test-Results, and Diagrams 19-21. Sipley, A Half Century of Color 47, 53-54. George Edward Brown and C Welborne Piper, Colour Photography with the Lumière Autochrome Plates (London: H Greenwood & Company, 1907) 1-3. Auguste Lumiére and Louis Lumiére, “Photographic Plate for Colour Photography,” Google Patents (United States: 1906), vol. Howard Farmer, “Autochrome and Their Reproduction on Paper,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVI (London: Percy Lund-Humphries & Company for AW Penrose & Company, 1910-11) 12-13. National Geographic, First Published Natural-Color Photo. Sipley, A Half Century of Color 48, 57. Friedman, History of Color Photography 197-213. Gamble, “The Year’s Progress in Process Work, 1915,” 9. FW Plews, “Colour in Newspapers,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1937) 125. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 19-21. H Kawamoto, “The History of Liquid-Crystal Displays,” Proceedings of the IEEE 90.4 (2002). Friedman, History of Color Photography 197-213. 113 Friedman, History of Color Photography 37, 84, 92. 114 Friedman, History of Color Photography 197. Autotype Company Limited, “Trichrome Printing by the Autotype Carbon and Carbro Processes,” (London: Autotype Company Limited, 1900-1930). Walter Channon, “Colour Originals,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1931) 148. W Gamble, “The Editor’s Review, 1931,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1931) 10-11.

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Chapter Five References

115 O Wheeler, “Co-Operation in Colour Work,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1932). S Ray, “Standardizing the Original,” Percy Lund, Humphries & Co Ltd for AW Penrose & Co Ltd, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVII (London: AW Penrose and Company Limited, 1913-14). WMG Eade, “The Standardisation of Trichromatic Inks,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930). Ilston Cox, “Can Trichromatic Inks Be Standardised?,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1921). Ilston Cox, “Standardising of Three-Colour Inks,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1929). JR Riddell, “Standardising Three-Colour Ink Form the Printer’s Point of View,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930). DA Spencer, “British Standard Four & Three-Colour Letterpress Printing Inks,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1950). DA Spencer, “British Standard Offset-Lithographic Inks,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956). DA Spencer, “Vivex-Linked Photoengraving,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1939), GH Saxon Mills, “Colour Photography,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. William Gamble, vol. XXXV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1933) 16. DA Spencer, “A Contribution to Colourgravure Technique,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1934) 45-48. 116 H Joy, “My Impressions of Kinemacolor,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. William Gamble, vol. XVII (London: AW Penrose and Company Limited, 1911-12) 161-64. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 695-96. 117 TLJ Bentley, “The Kodachrome Process,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1937) 103- 03. 118 Bentley, “The Kodachrome Process.” 119 Gordon McLeish, “Negative/Positive Colour Prints,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. Delafons Allan, vol. 53 (London: Lund Humphries, 1959) 101-04. 120 McLeish, “Negative/Positive Colour Prints,” 101-04. 121 McLeish, “Negative/Positive Colour Prints,” 101-04. 122 Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present Day, Rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art; distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, 1964) 8. Friedman, History of Color Photography 94-97, 108-14, 25. Peres, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and Applications, History, and Science 697-98. EJ Wall, The History of Three-Color Photography (Boston, Massachusetts: American Photographic Publishing Company, 1925). Bentley, “The Kodachrome Process,” 101. 123 Newhall, The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present Day 21.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 221

Chapter Five References

124 Newhall, The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present Day 11-16, 22-24. Friedman, History of Color Photography 131-32. Sipley, A Half Century of Color 139-66. Anton F Baumann and Kurt Peter Karfeld, Das Farbige Leica-Buch: Die Farbenphotographie, Ihre Technik Und Ihre Möglichkeiten (München: Knorr & Hirth GmbH, 1938). 125 Friedman, History of Color Photography 197-213. Bentley, “The Kodachrome Process,” 101-05. 126 Bentley, “The Kodachrome Process,” 101-05. 127 RB Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1954,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1954). 128 DA Spencer, “Modern Processes of Colour Photography,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1949) 80. WA Reedy, “The Ektacolor Process,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1951) 85. 129 FR Clapper (discussion leader) and American Institute of Graphic Arts, “Properties of Transparencies,” Third Seminar on Color in Print (New York and Detroit: American Institute of Graphic Arts; Safran Printing Company, 1966).

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 222

Figure 1: ER Fisler: New Scanners, Old Problems, central panel of the Chromograph, 1967.1

6. Blackboxing Colour

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 18882

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 223 Introduction

Figure 2: Michael H Bruno: Kodak’s class of ’31. Time–Springdale colour scanner, Penrose Annual, 1980.3

In We Have Never Been Modern, 1993 the contrast Latour makes between Boyle and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) defines another marker of modernity. Boyle was the creator of the politics of science, and Hobbes of the science of politics. “In other words, they are inventing our modern world, a world in which the representation of things through the intermediary of the laboratory is forever dissociated from the representation of citizens through the intermediary of the social contract,” says Latour.4 Kodachrome and its offspring colour films were products of the society of graphic artists and became the property of science and its corporations. This chapter will trace the transformation of colour reproduction, from its former a realm of the graphic artist craftsmanship, which controlled “abrupt filters” for image analysis, into its new status of corporate property, blackboxed into machines, democratised, an object of society, a Latourian hybrid. Latour explains:

The moderns confused products with processes. They believed that the productions of bureaucratic rationalization presupposed rational bureaucrats; that the production of universal science depended on universalist scientists; that the production of effective technologies led to the effectiveness of engineers; that the production abstraction was itself abstract; that the production of formalism was itself formal. We might just as well say that a refinery produces oil in a refined manner, or that a dairy produces butter in a butterly way!5

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 224 Automating Colour

Figure 3: NS Amstutz: Method of Reproducing Photographs, Patent, 1897.6

Figure 4: Bain News Service: Belin receiving a telephotograph, 1920.7

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 225

Figure 5 Eastman Kodak Company: The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction, 1937.8

Figure 6: O Hassing and F Oskar Nielsen: The Hassing Electro-Mechanical Engraving Machine, Penrose Annual, 1938.9

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 226

Figure 7: FW Coppin, M Hepher, J Lee and DJ Wells: A Comparison of Colour Masking and Hand Correction in the Four-Colour Half-Tone Process, Penrose Annual, 1950.10 Top: Set of four-colour half-tone blocks colour corrected by hand with fine etching. Bottom: Set of four-colour blocks t the colour correction has been obtained by masks. Kodachrome 35mm transparencies, blocks by Sun Engraving Company Limited, printing by Sun Printers Limited, using British Standard Four-colour Inks.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 227

Figure 8: M Hepher and J Lee: Tone and Colour Correction by Masking in Photogravure, Penrose Annual, 1952.11 Left: Continuous tone positives without tone or colour correction. Right: Continuous tone positives corrected for tone or colour with masks. Printed in four-colour gravure by Sun Printers Limited from an Ektachrome transparacy by Studio Graphics

Figure 9: SW Levine and MS Hotchkiss: Left: Fairchild Scan-a-Sizer, an electronic halftone engraver. Right: Variable Response Unit for versatile tone control of electronic engraver, Penrose Annual, 1956.12

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 228 In prepress main objective of masking was to eliminate both hand retouching from separation negatives or the fine etching of plates. Re-etching and retouching was expensive, and gave a mechanical appearance to the picture. Three-colour halftone was thought to be a subtractive process; however, in the light areas where halftone dots do not overlap it is additive. So masking in halftone only works to a certain degree. Friedman in 1944 recounts:

When a study was made of the properties of the printing inks and the deficiencies of the spectral characteristics noted, the idea of photographic re-etching or subtraction of densities by use of masks became immediately apparent. For a short space of time the photoengraving industry, never noted for [a] scientific approach to its problems, went overboard for this technique without inquiring too closely as to possible discrepancies between working conditions and conditions under which masking is possible.13

Owing to their failures, printers reverted to handwork and the use of “good right eyes”, says Friedman. Clean-cut separation filters were unavailable so the “wretched fine etcher” was a necessity. In 1924, Gamble said that all that workers can do is: “…to correct the inherent faultiness of the photographic record by elaborate hand work, either on the plates or (in the case of lithography and collotype) on the negatives and positives.” In the 1890s, Albert introduced separation masking to improve his black printer. He combined a weakly duplicated positive of his black plate negative with each of his three- colour negatives to eliminate the black represented in each of these plates – an approach that interestingly, mirrors Hering and Ostwald’s veiling of hue with black and white. His 1899 patent for a subtractive process mask to correct for colour errors based on Beer– Lambert’s law pertaining to light absorption, known in reproduction industries as additivity and proportionality rules.14

Additivity Rule: The red printing density of any mixture of the three dyes should be equal to the sum of the red printing densities of the three dyes measured separately; and the same should be true of the green and blue printing densities. Proportionality Rule: When measured as printing densities, the ratios of the wanted to the unwanted absorptions for each dye should be independent of the concentration of the dye.15

Another masking method combined two negatives to make a positive in order to eliminate the black in the third, and a third used coloured filters for correction. Burman Norton in Photographic Key Plate for Offset Printing, 1915 suggested producing the black separation by exposures through all three filters. Otto Pfenninger and EC Townsend corrected the poor magenta rendering by combining the magenta and cyan negative to reduce the yellow negative. Generally, masking corrects unwanted magenta in cyan and

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 229 yellow in magenta. Yellow is the only pure colour. Kodachrome and Agfacolor, because of their combination of couplers and dyes, had almost perfectly sharp cut filters. Friedman notes that if Kodachrome dyes were not secret, their application would have produced perfect process separations. Alexander Murray from Kodak in 1934 published The Masking Method of Colour Correction Applied to Three- and Four-colour Reproduction; it assumed subtractive mixture followed the same principle as additive. Kodak’s The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction, 1937 revealed the use of infrared filters to prepare the black printer (Figure 5).16 DA Spencer in Modern Processes of Colour Photography, 1949 saw the impending mechanisation and automation of the process, but believes, despite this:

These methods will however, unfortunately make slow headway in the typical engraving house, for they involve breaks with long-established traditions of procedure—the submission to instrument reading for the experienced eye of the skill craftsman—and the mechanization of procedures which those bred in the industry have in their bones are not capable of being mechanized.17

Masking was not as difficult for colour photography, with WF Fox developing a Bipak and a Tripak technique in 1915 that combined positives with negatives. Troland and Friedman both developed systems of masking multilayered films. In Eastman Kodak’s wash-off relief print-process the red negative is printed unchanged, producing a cyan matrix; a magenta matrix is obtained by a combination with green negative and a cyan matrix to reduce the cyan. The magenta and cyan matrices are combined with blue negative, producing the yellow matrix. J Bekk’s Colour Synthesis in Trichromatic Printing, 1940 still discussed the importance of masking and retouching because: “…the spectral reflectance of trichromatic inks is not ideal. These colour differences belong to the phenomena that make true colour-rendering unattainable without subjecting the half- tone plates to corrections….”. Even in 1938, well after the introduction of Kodachrome, auto-focusing cameras, integrated actinometers, and better dry plates Fishenden still saw colour synthesis as a craft rather than a science (Figure 7 and Figure 8).18

In recent times the subject has been studied more scientifically, although even its strongest supporters must agree that any masking process is empirical, so the successful application must depend largely on craft skill; at its best the masking method for the correction of the red printing plate must be better than laborious retouching. To remove the necessity for this correction we need new colour lakes, more correct in their spectral absorptions.19

Today, it is amusing to read that GG Field, in The Evolution of Scanner Technology, 1986 predicted that input via scanning “…will approach, but probably not reach, 100%.”

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 230 Scanners were fulfilling the demand for improved production times. Printing techniques up to the 1930s had changed little, letterpress colour was corrected with complicated etching techniques and used unwieldy glass plates, and masking was relatively unknown.20 O Hassing and J Oskar Nielsen, while promoting their engraver in The Hassing Electro-Mechanical Engraving Machine in 1938, acknowledged that mechanical engraving was a by-product of the transmission of images by telegraph (Figure 6). Alexander Bain (1876-1963) patented an “electro-chemical copying telegraph” in 1843, as did FC Blakewell in 1847, followed by Giovanni Caselli’s (1815- 1891) Pantelegraph (Figure 4). Optical engraving machines are the offspring of wood engraving, Ives’s mechanical halftone, and the engraving machines of Noah Steiner Amstutz (Figure 3). Mechanical line engravers were also developed by Howey, Bennett, and Carbonelle. The Hassing engraver scans electro-optically point by point; a spot of light creates an electrical signal that controls a V-tool. Standard three-colour filters are used to produce separations (Figure 6).21

Fishenden in 1934 pointed out that Walter C Howey’s Engravograph with photoelectric cells was merely a return to Ives’s mechanical halftone. His Editor’s Review, 1940 begans: “The loss, the waste, the anxiety of war!” Penrose was silent for a decade, and so too were advances in graphic arts technology. In Fishenden’s Editorial Commentary of 1954 on electronics in the graphic arts, he says: “…electronic engraving machines cannot give the resolution equal to normal photo-engraving.” He feels that the RCA, Time-Springdale and the Belin machines have made progress in under-colour removal. In the following two years, he described the Fairchild Scan-a-Graver as modified for three-colour separations, the Clare E Ernst patent for scaling images; the Klischograph, which cut plastic plates; the RCA Interchemical Colour Corrector, the Elagrama, the Acmecolor Separator, the HPK Autoscan, and the Klischograph Colour separator. Finally, Fairchild’s Scan-a-Sizer which, in combination with a Variable Response Unit has electronic colour selection (Figure 9).22

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 231 Coding colour

Figure 10: AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg. Color Correction in Color Printing, 1947. A: Three positives are attached to platens, B: Relay rack, C: Dot producing circuit, D: Fourth platen and recording head.23

Figure 11: Harry Turner: A System to Aid Colour Interpretation, 1929.24 Column A: Prints in equal parts yellow, red and blue. Fig 1: Reduction of yellow, Fig 2: Reduction of red, Fig 3: Reduction of blue Fig 5: Increased yellow, Fig 5: Increased red, Fig 6: Increased blue

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 232

Figure 12: FGS Cackett: A Color Chart for Photo-Offset Work Penrose Annual, 1940.25 Producing the Chart: Each band is exposed in a dark-room at exposures of 31/2, 5, 7, 14 and 20 seconds.

Figure 13: Hardy and Wurzburg: The Theory of Three-Colour Reproduction, 1937. Spectrographic curves of three ideal dyes or pigments at full concentration.26

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 233

Figure 14: David L Macadam: Photographic Aspects of the Theory of Three-Color Reproduction, 1938 Theoretical spectral sensitivities additive process. Note the alignment of the positive curves with the negative curves below the x-axis.27

Figure 15: Opening sequence of Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back with Harrison Ford on location in Norway on the Hardangerjøkulen glacier, 1980.28

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 234

Figure 16: Nathaniel Korman: The Digital Computer-Controlled Scanner for Colour Separation, Penrose Annual, 1972.29

Figure 17: Bob Brooks: Photography for Print, Penrose Annual, 1966. Photos: Brooks, scanner: Vario-Klischograph, offset-lithography: Lund Humphries

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 235

Figure 18: Bob Brooks: Photography for Print, Penrose Annual, 1966. Photos: Brooks, Scanner: Pawo Colotron, Offset-lithography: Lund Humphries

Figure 19: ER Fisler: New Scanner, Old Problems, Penrose Annual, 1967.30 Four-colour reproduction on Chromagraph C186 by WR Royle & Son Limited, 500lpi, 5 minutes per colour and contact screens, 8x10 transparency by DH Zinram, offset-lithography by Lund Humphries

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 236

Figure 20: ER Fisler: New Scanner, Old Problems, Penrose Annual, 1967.31 Four-colour reproduction on Diascan 101 by Crosfield Electronics Limited, 500lpi, 8 minutes per colour and no contact screens, 8x10 transparency by DH Zinram, offset-lithography by Lund Humphries

Figure 21: ER Fisler: New Scanner, Old Problems, Penrose Annual, 1967.32 Four-colour reproduction on KS Paul–PDI Scanner, 500lpi, 10 minutes per colour and contact screens, 8x10 transparency by DH Zinram, offset-lithography by Lund Humphries

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 237 Alexander Murray and Richard S Morse from Kodak published masking techniques in 1930s, patenting the Murray and Morse drum scanner for separation negatives in 1937; Vincent Hall developed colour correction for this scanner in 1941. Five days after Murray and Morse came the patent for the Hardy–Wurzburg scanner; it scanned three separation negatives to produce colour corrected films (Figure 10).33 Arthur C Hardy and FL Wurzburg, in The Theory of Three-Colour Reproduction, 1937 acknowledged Le Blon’s “adequacy” of three printing inks, and Maxwell’s use of “appropriate colour filters”. They also acknowledged Ives’s recognition that Maxwell’s sensation curves were in fact mixture curves, and attempted to resolve this controversy, by embodying subjective colour curves within the objective practice. They argued that a subjective reproduction technique would be impossible with a large number of primaries. Le Blon’s definition of three primitive colours was incorrect because of the negative retinal responses; he achieved his success through physical adjustment of plate densities. Maxwell believed that for an automatic colour process, the separations needed to perform correctly. Hardy and Wurzburg strove to apply the CIE1931 tristimulus values to the three-colour separations, even though they were aware that CIE RGB values did not match the values of common photographic materials that are without negative values. They remarked that, formerly, practitioners ignored negative responses, dismissing them as purely theoretical, or believed that colour filters failed because of the Herschel Effect – that is, where the light destroys a latent image in an emulsion. Hardy and Wurzburg’s solution to imparting a negative response to an emulsion was to use a telegraph system, scanning an image with a photoelectric cell twice, once for the positive curve and once for a negative, and subtracting one from the other. In the past, masking was achieved empirically by using colour arrays to estimate the correction (Figure 11 and Figure 12). In subtractive processes differing where primaries and densities produce metamers, they classified these primaries as unstable. Stable subtractive primaries should have no spectral crossover; that is, all-on or and all-off: cyan should have wavelengths longer than 580 millimicrons, magenta 490-580 millimicrons, and yellow less than 490 millimicrons.34 (Figure 13)

MacAdam, in Photographic Aspects of the Theory of Three-Color Reproduction, 1938 recognised that Hardy and Wurzburg had argued for the possibility of theoretical negative values in photography. Ideal dyes for subtractive colour mixture have not been isolated as the negative curves of spectral primaries align with the positive curves (Figure 14). This combination of assimilation and dissimilation creates metamers in colour reproduction. Metamers occur infrequently in vision, so a photographic emulsion that is equivalent to

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 238 vision with a negative response, is an unlikely to be discovered. MacAdam instead defined parameters for positive sensitivity; these being Eastman panchromatic materials, Wratten filters No 21 (orange), No 40A (green), and No 49a (dark blue) plus No 2A (pale yellow).” He said: “Correction methods, such as double printing, photoelectric correction, and masking, are so complicated that their use will probably be confined for some years to relatively few applications in the graphic arts.”35 MacAdam proposed a compromise: follow recommendations by Ives, Abney, and Yule and use imaginary primaries of greater purity than physical ones to allow positive computation (this causes tolerable errors in hue purity), add a function to the calculation to negate the negatives (this will cause desaturation), and increase image contrast to compensate for the loss of colour purity. Finally he states: “The theory of subtractive reproduction must be based on the theory of additive reproduction supplemented by a law of subtractive colour mixture. Therefore, an analytically convenient law of subtractive colour mixtures is necessary before the principles of additive colour reproduction can be applied to practical subtractive processes.” It will be another fifty years before imaginary primaries entered the graphic arts through colour management.36

As late as the 1980s colour variation resulting from spectral composition, film densities, and processing causes was still an issue. In Star Wars V, The Empire Strikes Back (Figure 15). Producer Gary Kurtz remarks on colour matching of white across scenes: “Everybody who has dealt with visual effects said never do snow because you cannot maintain the colour. We ignored all those warnings and decided to shoot in the snow anyway.” Colour balance remained an issue for printers, despite Kodachrome and Ektacolour’s ease of use from colour-balanced emulsions. Printers and art directors discussed this at the Second Seminar on Color in Print in New York, 1966:37

“David Way (Discussion Leader): … your transparency, 90 per cent of the time … will go too blue or too red or will go weak in the yellow. The reason for this is film is still not completely predictable … you get a batch that is out of balance … you can make an overall correction by adding coloured films of filters over the transparency.

Member: When, for example, you put in a red filter to improve skin tones, if there is green foliage in the background, you will kill it. Mr Way: No, you will find that in your green foliage there is red. You will find that your green foliage does not have enough red, too.”38

Neugebauer in Theory of Masking for Colour Correction, 1952, acknowledged Albert as the father of masking. Masking was commonplace in photography and print, as theoretically correct three-colour dyes still did not exist. He acknowledges JAC Yule’s

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 239 definitions of film densities, masks and separations, and MacAdam’s definition of subtractive colour mixture. The steps for masking are as follows:

1. Create the mask for blue (yellow plate) through a red and green filter. 2. Create the mask for the green (red plate) through a red and blue filter 3. A mask is generally unnecessary for red (cyan plate) 4. Create the red separation (cyan plate) 5. Create blue separation (yellow plate) with the blue mask 6. Create green separation (red plate) with the green mask 7. Create the black printer.

If the main colours of an original were corrected it was known that minor colours would also correct. To produce neutral grey scales the three colour separations must have the same gamma; however, Neugebauer’s equations do not result in neutral greys but a scale from white through to dark brown. To compensate he recommended an underexposure of the red; but recognised that neutral greys from three-colour mixtures would only be possible with electronic scanners; he referenced Hardy and Wurzburg’s A Photoelectric Method for Preparing Printing Plates, 1948.39

In 1937, inspired by the new science of colorimetry, Hardy and Wurzburg began investigating the three-colour processes; by 1947 they moved on to four-colour and reviewed all the issues of colour reproduction. They recognised Ives’s work that noted that halftone distorts image tone rendition, the dots only appearing solid but in fact suffering from internal reflections, with re-etching required. Moiré becomes worse after paper shrinkage. Printing adjacent dots (additive synthesis) has a different result to two dots overprinted (subtractive synthesis). Returning to single line screens, Hardy and Wurzburg angled for the black, cyan, and magenta at 30°, with yellow angled between any two of these. They used telegraphic phototubes to control the dot on the printing negative.40

In Color Correction in Colour Printing 1948, they had improved their scanner for colour correction use. They aimed to use machine “intelligence” from “three photo-tube currents” to match the tristimulus values of the “normal observer” with printing inks of the complementary colour. Noting the complexity of the issue, they stated: “In view of the number of solutions required (one for each dot in the reproduction), it appeared that only electronic circuits could be made to operate with sufficient rapidity.” From original art three halftone negatives were produced simultaneously on flatbeds, applying ME Demichel’s principle that CMYK produces eight colours – cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, blue, black and white; and Neugebauer’s equations that predict the optical mixing by the human eye as he described in The Theoretical Foundation for Multicolour

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 240 Printing, 1937 (Table 1 and Table 2). This provided a method to calculate tristimulus values for CMYK colour mixtures. They found that Neugebauer equations remained valid for all printing inks.41

Colour Fractional areas White (1-c)(1-m)(1-y) Cyan c(1-m)(1-y) Magenta m(1-c)(1-y) Yellow y(1-c)(1-m) Red my(1-c) Green cy(1-m) Blue cm(1-y) Black cmy

Table 1: The Demichel equation. Dot sizes on the printing plates are represented as c (cyan), m (magenta) and y (yellow). The proportional areas, white, cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, blue and black are calculated from the individual equations.42

X = (1-c)(1-m)(1-y)Xw+c(1-m)(1-y)Xc+m(1-c)(1-y)Xm+y(1-c)(1-m)Xy

+ my(1-c) Xr+cy(1-m)Xg+cm(1-y)Xb+cmyXk

Y = (1-c)(1-m)(1-y)Yw+c(1-m)(1-y)Yc+m(1-c)(1-y)Ym+y(1-c)(1-m)Yy

+ my(1-c) Yr+cy(1-m)Yg+cm(1-y)Yb+cmyYk

Z = (1-c)(1-m)(1-y)Zw+c(1-m)(1-y)Zc+m(1-c)(1-y)Zm+y(1-c)(1-m)Zy

+ my(1-c) Zr+cy(1-m)Zg+cm(1-y)Zb+cmyZk

Table 2: The three-colour Neugebauer equation. X,Y,Z are the tristmulus values of an 43 integrated area on the print.

They attached colour bars on their progressive proofs to render the eight principal colours in CMY plus grey scale in K. Formerly in three-colour methods grey was rendered in CMY. They stated that this “…amply justifies the view that three-colour and four-colour processes are essentially different methods of reproduction.” Colour correction is achieved in their system firstly, by applying the equations for removing the negative parts of the tristimulus values; secondly, by correcting for impure ink colour; and thirdly, by calculating colour using the Neugebauer equations.44 In the 1949 Penrose Annual they affirmed that:

…we have demonstrated experimentally that, by the aid of the science of colorimetry, it is possible to state the requirements of faithful colour reproduction in mathematical terms, to establish electrical signals representing the various quantities in the mathematical equations, to solve the equations by electronic means, and to use the solutions to obtain faithful colour reproductions automatically.45

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 241 Time Inc’s Springdale laboratories adopted the development of Morse and Murray’s Kodak scanner in 1946, by 1949 the scanner was in use (Figure 2). The Time–Springdale (PDI drum) scanner was an efficient system and became an industry standard until the 1980s (Figure 21). For some time the scanner was secret producing only separations for Life magazine. Although difficult and inefficient to use, the Hardy–Wurzburg scanner was commercialised by the Interchemical Corporation. In 1951 Radio Corporation of America (RCA) replaced the mechanical approach of the Interchemical scanner with cathode ray tubes and added a computer to solve the Neugebauer equations. Brief competitors for the PDI scanner were the Hunter–Penrose, Belin and ACME. Fairchild Graphic Equipment acquired ACME in 1958 and their scanner became the Scan-a-Color. A PDI scan took 70 minutes, the addition of a phototube “flying spot” reducing this to ten. Harold E Haynes explained The RCA-Interchemical All Electronic Colour Correction System, 1952. This involved a set of separation negatives from which a set of positives on glass plates were prepared with proper tone scale and photographic properties, the electronic colour correction system making image adjustments with a computer and producing a set of colour corrected negatives within an hour.46

Rudolf Hell (1901-2002) began his engineering career designing by the Hellschreiber, a forerunner to the fax; his Klischograph followed this principle and scanned originals, halftone and continuous tone films. The photoelectric current drove an engraving tool resulting in metal or plastic plates for letterpress. Hell in 1955 recognised the need for craftsmanship, stating: “The Finella colour Klischograph will be of great advantage to those process workers who possess the highest skill and experience in judging colours and colour prints, a skill which is indispensable when cutting colour blocks on a machine.” He used the flat bed approach on the Colorgraph of 1957; it scanned uncorrected separation negatives to four corrected separations. Crosfield in 1957 produced the Scanatron that used transparencies and separation negatives; it could also produce continuous tone negatives for gravure and halftones. The Hell Vario-Klischograph of 1957, designed for engraving letterpress blocks, was adapted to engrave films for lithography (Figure 17). Uptake of scanning was low in the 1960s as it lacked the flexibility of halftone, colour correction, enlargement, positive or negative films, but most of all it was slow. Crosfield Magnascan 450 and the Hell Chromagraph DC300 began to address these problems (Figure 19). The Crosfield Diascan, the Hell, Chromagraph and the KS Paul–PDI scanner were less expensive many other scanners; ER Fisler in New Scanners, Old Problems, 1967 feels that with good originals they would provide the functions needed for colour reproduction (Figure 19, Figure 20 and

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 242 Figure 21). PDI in 1971 introduced a digital laser scanner, followed by Hell, Crosfield and Dainippon. The first video display system was by Hazeltine Corporation in 1970, and it could accept signals from all the scanners available in that time. The Crosfield Magnascan and the Hell Chromaskop in 1977 allowed positioning of images on film and later advanced to video displays and saving to disk. In 1979 the Scitex page makeup system allowed: “…electronic airbrushing, local correction, image assembly, page makeup, cloning, and video proofing,” said Field. In 1982 Eikonix Corporation’s Designmaster 8000 used flat bed scanning with linear arrays of CCDs, this was closely followed by the Scitex’s Satlight (portable scanner), Crosfield’s Scantel, and Hell’s CD31S.47

Computers and scanners did not see exactly like humans, and manual controls were developed to resolve the imperfections of the equations. These analogue scanners and computers were slow and could only correct globally. The Neugebauer equations had slow computation time and there were errors in the equations. By 1958, Negeubauer was aware that colour reproduction issues were still unsolved; algorithms were needed for colour gamut, tone correction, and colorimetric transformations. HR Rose in 1955 suggested that look-up tables (LUT) for colour transformations from one device to another. In 1972, Nathaniel Korman introduced such tables in the form of charts printed on presses then scanned; a computer stored the tristimulus values, and if colours in originals do not appear in the LUT, the computer interpolated them (Figure 16). The Magnascan 550 adopted the LUT principle in 1976. Eikonix created the first digital camera in 1984: its filters had a close match to human vision, reducing the need for colour correction. The Eikonix Design Master in 1982 combined LUT, CIE tristimulus values, and Neugebauer equations. Field argues that: “The major advantage of recording picture information in terms of CIE tristimulus values is that the response of the scanner to a given colour will be the same as the response of a human observer.”48 This method used is still used today in the IT8 standard of the Committee for Graphic Arts Technologies Standards (CGATS). Warren Rhodes in Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations, 1989 said:

It is not clear yet that the printing industry is moving from a craft to a technology… All of the design functions of the images can be performed and committed to digital files. These files are a complete specification for the printed image. The printing function can become a manufacturing operation. The printing process, then, becomes simply following a set of explicit operations and precisely controlling the platemaking and printing.49

Despite scanning technology’s aspiration to reproduce tristimulus values, ingrained printing practice was to improve upon the originals, adjusting for the lower gamut of

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 243 printing ink and removing colour casts in transparencies. Printers enjoyed making local colour corrections so the RCA scanner global colour controls were unsuccessful. Scanning aimed to standardise production so a printer’s new craftmanship was the elimination of variation. John Odell from RCA “…was aware that for the scanner to be successful [printers] would have to standardise their practice and make [printing] repeatable.” Printer craftsmen did not like this loss of control.50 Nathaniel Bishop in The Time–Springdale Colour Scanner, 1951 had written:

The separations so produced differ from separations made on the conventional colour camera in three important respects. Firstly, the colour separations are automatically masked, or colour corrected, to compensate for the spectral colour deficiencies of process inks. Second, the black printer separation is so produced that it bears an accurate colour relationship to the three colour separations. Third, all three-colour separations are further masked to balance with the black separation. The third function is occasionally referred to as ‘undercolour removal’.51

Halftone refused to conform to the Neugebauer equations. JAC Yule and FR Clapper discovered that light scattering changed the theoretical size of the dots. Internal reflections meant that a halftone acted as if it were a continuous tone, so suffered from proportionality and additivity errors; as well as, colour reproduction being metameric, colour matches only occur in matching light conditions; a principle understood in CIE1931. Rhodes notes that Under Colour Removal (UCR) and Grey Component Replacement (GCR), were up to 1985, an empirical process until Pollack and Chappius found methods to mask in conjunction with the Neugebauer equations and Sayangi, Tamune, and Kita elaborated on the equations for UCR and GCR.52

Gamble had claimed in 1932 that MAN engineering works’ Uhertype photosetting was epoch-making. In 1956 the paradigm shift that had been a long time in the making finally occurred with the movement away from the metal type of Linotype and Monotype to photosetting by Linofilm, Photon, Fotosetter, and Monophoto. Hot metal men were the last man’s man craftsmen; they could design, calculate line and column lengths, command language, punctuation, and grammar; they understood mechanics, metallurgy and mathematics; they were dexterous typesetters; and were strong enough to lift the matrices. Strongly unionised, they were “unbearably maddening and impossibly overpaid”, says William Sonn in Paradigms Lost,. 2006. Publishers were desperate to get rid of them. They were replaced by reporters, editors and designers connected by “devices and cables” that were “…maintained by ‘system administrators,’ a fresh well-compensated lot fully and immodestly aware that the species could not communicate without them any more.”53

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 244 With the installation of Otto Mergenthaler’s Linotype at the New York Tribune in 1886, a paradigm shift in print technology occurred. Typesetting became an industry instead of a craft, page output increased by a factor of ten, says Anders Bjurstedt in Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003. Photosetting parallelled the improvements in imaging technology. PDP8 from Digital Equipment could format text and hyphenate for phototypesetters. Newspapers in the 1980s, trying to compete with colour television, found their imaging and page makeup systems did not integrate. Catalogue work printed in offset and gravure needed type. Photosetters Lumitype and Linotron fulfilled this need. An important force for change was the need to access data on computers for use on computerised photosetters; system integrators such as Atex, Hendrix and CSI fulfilled this need. Crosfield adopted the systems approach, buying Hastech, CSi and Muirhead, a telephoto and facsimile firm, to form the Publishing Systems Company.54

Neugebauer recognised the importance of craftsmanship, and proposed a “Simulator- Monitor” in which “the trained eye of the artist was needed to select the optimum masking or scanning parameters.” These systems did not include text handling, an innovation to come from desktop publishing. The first digital scanner was the Crosfield Maganscan 450, which could produce both continuous tone and halftones, followed in 1974 by the Hell laser scanner that generated the dot directly. During the 1970s drum scanners saturated the market and compositing techniques were developed so that the more than one image at a time could be scanned in final position. Planning by hand remained an issue, Scitex in 1980 establishing video editing followed closely by Crosfield, Hell and Dainippon; in 1982 Hell released the Chromacrom and Crosfield the Studio System. The 1980s produced many photosetters, Linotype, Monotype, Compugraphic and Digiset; however, integration of colour and type was a holy grail. A developmental bottleneck was that high-end systems could not produce type and low-end systems did not have the processing power to handle images. The solution to this was “automatic picture replacement” (APR) which was adopted by the “Big Four” scanning companies, Crosfield, Dainippon, Linotype Hell and PDI. Neugebauer changed his mind and argued for image modifications to occur prior to the separation and printing; he maintained that the industry should undergo the transition from a craft-oriented to a technology-oriented one. Gamble had foreseen this in 1927: “One can well imagine that before long there will be a television receiving apparatus in every newspaper office, enabling pictures to be received of current events without requiring the intervention of the press photographer and needing only to be recorded by the camera in the newspaper office.”55

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 245 Newspaper publishers were in a bind; they did not want to invest in high-cost computer typesetting machinery only operable by specialists – this would be a return to the old days where compositors dominated. Apple’s new approach was for “good enough quality”, or as Professor Sainsbury put it, “the most adequate instrument for an average purpose”. This appealed to the newspapermen as they did not require the production values of high-end systems. Apple computers became an editorial workhorse. Addressing this part of the market was made possible through cross-licensing Apple, Adobe PostScript printer description language (PDL), and the Linotype’s catalogue of fonts. Adobe’s PostScript became part of Linotype’s imagesetters and Apple’s low cost laserwriters, the latter being marketed to small companies and consumers. Adobe published its PostScript language and Apple its programming specifications; software developers could license and build applications, a procedure resulting in Pagemaker (1986), Illustrator (1987), QuarkXpress (1987), Freehand (1988), Ready Set Go, and Lightspeed. Jonathan Seybold, founder of Seybold Seminars on electronic publishing, printing and graphics, on seeing the first Apple Macintosh thought: “It was very clear to me that the distinction between computing and information science and graphics would just go away.” Steve Jobs (1955-2011), co-founder of Apple said: “The Mac was the first computer that was commercially available with a graphical interface. We were doing typography on the screen, while with PostScript Adobe was doing type on the printed page,”56

Aldus proposed Open Press Interface (OPI) allowing the use of low-resolution images on the desktop and high-resolution on servers. The release in 1990 of PostScript Level 2 supplied an industry standard PDL that the major players had failed to achieve. QuarkXpress allowed third parties to develop plugins making Quark an industry layout standard for some time, challenged ten years later by Adobe InDesign. PostsScript Level 2 is significant for allowing four-colour output in fully composed pages. The release of PhotoShop coincided with PostScript 2.5.1 making PhotoShop an industry standard. PostScript Level 2 had colour separation issues – namely, trapping, banding and moiré, the latter resulting from a failure to use industry knowledge on screen angles. PostScript’s designers also made a classic colour error; they thought that equal proportions of three primary colours would produce a neutral grey, and logically extrapolated that black would be darkest part of the three colours.57

Desktop scanners were first available as small drum scanners, becoming later flatbeds with charge coupler devices (CCD). PhotoShop became the poor man’s colour correction tool; it was an adequate instrument for an average purpose, its quality was “good enough”

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 246 consequentially its separation algorithms were “just awful,” according to Bjurstedt. Migration to the low-end systems occurred when the PostScript issues were ironed out with advanced screening algorithms, improved trapping, better ripping, inclusion of preflighting and preproofing, and imposition software. High-end suppliers were in a pickle, eventuating in the purchase of Crosfield by DuPont and Fujifilm, Hell by Linotype then Linotype by Heidelberg. Finally a joint venture was endeavoured between Scitex and Creo. Creo developed computer to plate (CTP) then sold their digital division to Kodak.58

John Warnock (b1940) co-founder of Adobe had an idea – a device independent document initially called Interchange PostScript. In 1991, Adobe released it as Portable Document Format (PDF), a page describer for text, graphics, and images independent of the software that created it. It aimed to overthrow fax technology and to instigate the paperless office. Its integration into web browsers and the free software release of Acrobat Reader made PDF a standard for Internet distribution. Newspapers initiated further interest in PDF for publishing because PDF reduced timelines and costs. Associated Press established AP AdSend for online advertising delivery. PDF was “good enough” for newspapers but high-end publishers called for more control. Adobe delivered Acrobat 3.0 with support for both CMYK and spot colours. PostScript Level 3 supported more than 256 levels of grey, thus improving quality, with in-rip separations eliminating pre-separation files; and importantly, it offered PDF support, thus establishing PDF workflow. The late twentieth-century prepress industry once dominated by the “Big Four”, is now dominated by Adobe. In 2002, the ISO approved PDF/X (PDF 1.3) for digital exchange. Bjurstedt says: “The technology now is quite ‘easy’ and comprehensible – which means that thousands of jobs have been lost in the graphic arts industry. All of these jobs, which previously were done by trained graphic art craftsmen, are now done by the customer. Not always, but mostly without any formal training in typography, lay-out, or any sense of colour manipulation. This is really Good Enough Quality!”59

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 247 Colour Standards

Figure 22: Penrose Annual Colour Chart of British Standard Four-Colour Inks. DA Spencer: British Standard Four & Three-Colour Letterpress Printing Inks, 1950.60

Figure 23: Fishburn’s Artist’s and Colour Retoucher’s Guide to British Standard 2650 Four-Colour Offset Lithographic Inks. DA Spencer: British Standard Offset-Lithographic Inks.61

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 248

Figure 24: Kodak Q60 calibration target.

Figure 25: IT8 calibration target that came with my Umax PowerLook 1120.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 249

Figure 26: ISO300 test images supplied with my Epson 4000 and EFI Designer Edition RIP, c2000.

Colour process standardisation begins with the standardising of craftsmanship. Arthur Payne in Plates, Filters and Inks: Their Relative Importance in Three-Colour Work, 1904 advised that a platemaker should first choose his inks and filters, then use a sensitometer adjust his plates. The platemaker must supply the correct ink and plates together. Sukumar Ray in Standardizing the Original, 1913 recommended a standard grey scale for density adjustment; however, he noted that: “…calibrating a scale of densities is in many minds associated with fearful visions of mechanical and mathematical complications.” In 1913 the terms Standard Trichromatic Inks first appeared in a Penrose Annual advertorial, recommending that: “The ink control blocks should be put in to the chase with the three colours blocks when they are being proved, and that the same amount is used when reproving.” AE Bawtree, in An Improved Method for Measuring Colour, 1921 called for a standard derived from Maxwell’s colour mixtures. Klein in The Munsell Colour System and the Need for the Standardization of Colours, 1927 suggested that: “A physical science is impossible without the means for measurement classification, standardization, and nomenclature, all demand a method of measuring.” W Ilston asked in a 1921 article, Can Trichromatic Inks Be Standardised? He noted that Wratten and Wainwright suggested a series of “Standard Colour Filters,” however, “Ideal” trichromatic Inks were not light fast and so not widely accepted. He reported that

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 250 Australia had a standardised set tri-colour inks known as the Commonwealth Series. JR Riddell in Standardising Three-Colour Ink from the Printer’s Point of View, 1930 wrote “…there would still be those who consider that there is a deep and profound mystery in colour reproduction, and would go their own way in trying to improve upon a scientific method which has revolutionized colour printing.”62 Gamble in 1930 called for standardising instruments for an average purpose:

Unfortunately, we cannot use the theoretically correct colours in the inks for various practical reasons. Lack of permanence is one important consideration. Insufficient covering power is another, because results in weak, though bright, prints. Further, it is impossible to reproduce the neutral greys and blacks with such colours. The colour process engraver has to make a compromise to meet these conditions, and it is with the view of standardizing this compromise that the Federation of Master Printers, and that of the Master Process Engravers, set up a joint committee, which ultimately arrived at an agreed recommendation.63

WMG Eade in The Standardisation of Trichromatic Inks, 1930 felt that the British Standard would lead to better quality, putting Britain ahead of other countries. The standard was tested all over Britain, and it was a “most important item of progress”. He notes that 95% of American magazines at that time had agreed to use the American four- colour standard. He says:

The aim of the Joint Committee was to evolve a set of inks of correct shade and sufficient brilliancy to give separately, or in combination, the widest possible range of hues, consistent with satisfactory fastness to light and atmospheric conditions; to give good greys and black; to possess sufficient transparency in the red and blue, and to have proper balance and adequate covering power.64

Fishenden in 1934 states that The British Standard is no longer recognised. However, in the following year Fishenden wrote of the acceptance of the British Colour Council’s standard for textiles and artist colours and hoped this would provide a graphic arts standard. Cartwright in Colour Measurement 1940, suggested the use of the British Colour Council’s Dictionary of Colour Standards, as it had been recently measured with the Lovibind and CIE systems, but did not provide practical demonstration of such measurements. DA Spencer’s British Standard Four & Three-Colour Letterpress Printing Inks, 1950 cited the previous failures at standardisation by the British Master Printers’ Federation and blamed lack of publicity, limited application of three-colour instead of four-colour inks, and lack of adequate standard control. The British Standards Institute made another attempt; however, it used visual comparison rather than colorimetry. Fishenden supported it: “Colour printing is a huge industry and the use of

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 251 inks which vary in hue has induced a state of chaos.” Fishenden reports in 1952 that large companies have generally accepted the BS1480 ink standard; in 1954 he notes that 75% of four-colour printers were using it (Figure 22 & Figure 23).65

At the Second Seminar on Color in Print, 1966 Walter Von Egidy discussion leader of Color Preparation for Magazines, said: “Standardization can only be, from the magazine’s standpoint, standard paper for a particular publication, standard inks, the standard ink bars, and a standard amount of ink. This is standardization, and I hope within a very short time standardization will extend to light, both reflected and transmitted.” David Way, discussion leader of Color Preparation for Books, describes the Kodachrome World of prepress: “Sometimes, you see everything works the way it is supposed to work and we don’t need to do anything after the film is scanned. The light intensity, the speed of the film, the dyes, all come together the way they are supposed to, and you get good separation without filtering, masking and hand retouchining, and so on.” In 1983, Ruari Maclean was not satisfied by a uniform Kodachrome World: “Something important died when photographic separation made colour printing faster, cheaper, and, in commercial terms more “efficient’. They did not make colour printing ‘better.’”66 Franklin R Clapper at the Third Seminar on Color in Print, 1966 commented:

I read a definition of standard recently, which when I first read it shook me a bit. It said a standard was an arbitary solution to a recurring problem. I said, ‘My God, arbitary!’ But the significant word is solution.67

In 2009, Digital Pre Press Supervisor Peter Rimmer at Offset Alpine, (member of the 3DAP Committee that is implementing 3DAP version 3, Australia’s implementation of printing standard ISO 12647-2, and proofing control ISO 12647-7), spoke of the situation in 1996, before Offset Alpine’s adoption of digital workflow and CTP. There were no real colour standards; differing film types were supplied for a variety of ink weights, dot size, with multiple brands of proof; all requiring matching on press. All a platemaker could do was impose it together and make some adjustment on the press. Nevertheless, Rimmer hinted that at the time he had some personal film tricks of his own to reduce these issues. He was optimistic about the new Australian standard, suggesting that, if followed press reproduction could be “spot-on” to proofs. He suggested possible future of printing “to the numbers rather than a proof,” and remarked that at PacPrint 09 they exhibited monitors for proofing that were as good as hard copy.68

David Q McDowell began a series of graphic arts standard reports in 1991, as Chair of ANSI 1T8/TSC/WG11 (Color) and Senior Technical Staff member of the Graphics

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 252 Imaging Systems Division of Eastman Kodak Company. He reported on the activities of the ANSI Standards Committee IT8 (Digital Data Exchange Standards) in conjunction with the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and others, for offset lithography, letterpress, flexography, gravure, and screenprinting. Modern image exchange between computer systems made colour important. “It is not enough to say that CMYK is cyan, magenta, yellow, and black,” says McDowell. Before the digital environment, print was a closed loop system with film as the medium of exchange; inputs in 1991 were Agfachrome, Ektachrome, Fujichrome, Kodachrome, and Konicachrome. These stocks used just seven dyes and provided the target for input. The first aim of the committee was to map the film stocks with CIELAB with a D50 illuminant. The Kodak Q60 calibration target was accepted as a standard; it includes dye scales, a neutral dye scale, and colour gamut area of twelve hue angles arranged in three chroma values and three lightness values (Figure 24). In 1991, there were two output methods – Neugebauer equations or data tables (LUT). “The committee is struggling with target definition issues,” stated McDowell. One group prefers Neugebauer equations, the other calibration based on a data table. The target will include the 16 Neugebauer primaries along with CMYK, RGB, and neutral colour scales. The target name is 1T8.7/3 199X (Figure 25).69

In the Graphic Arts Standards Update, 1995 participants in determining the standard were Specifications for Web Offset Publications (SWOP), Open Systems Colour Association (OSCA), Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publications (DDAP) and the International Color Consortium (ICC). McDowell says that colour print characterisation requires: firstly, an ink hue definition; secondly, a print conditions definition, paper, ink colour (in the can), density, dot gain, colorimetry of colour solids and their overprints; thirdly, a standard data set balancing colour input and CMYK output. Colorimetric tests of European, US, and Japanese inks showed sufficient similarity for use with the standard. IT8 data is established as a print standard and a standard colour image is produced with natural images and control elements (Figure 26). Viewing conditions need review and a densitometry standard is required.70

SWOP proofing specifications became an ANSI standard by the 1996 Update and ICC were defining colour definitions for colour management systems. McDowell remarked: “In the mid 1980s the need to move data between electronic prepress systems was the motivation for the graphic arts industry to become involved with standards – virtually for the first time in its history.” In the US, the link between colour data and output was unknown; proofing imitated the print process, usually with machine proofs. Although

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 253 CIE had set a standard, it did not provide methods of computation between colour spaces. Devices were unpredictable in their attempts at metameric colour matching, transformations were “…not amenable to simple computation based on primaries used,” says McDowell. Matches between photographic dyes, CMYK inks, halftones and digital prints are determined by lighting sources, different characterisation is required at all stages, even though process inks were determined to have tolerances of 3-5∆E*. SWOP made public tolerances for dot gain, ink density and grey balance. Japan Color, European FOGRA, Gravure Association, and GAA Packaging committee were attempting to meet the ISO (IT8) standard. This will allow ICC to provide characterisation data for colour management systems.71 ICC says:

The International Color Consortium is an organization established for the purpose of creating, promoting and encouraging the standardization and evolution of an open, vendor-neutral, crossplatform color management system architecture and components. The work of the ICC shall be made available to the public and encouraged for adoption by all relevant suppliers of the ‘color’ industry. Where appropriate, ICC documents will be forwarded to national and international standards organizations.72

In the 1997 Update, definitions are made for 8-bit RGB (sRGB) for monitors, CIELAB and 16-bit CIEXYZ with a white point with D50 lighting.73 The 1998 Update announced an aim to develop a “device-independent” CMYK data. The aim is to match devices to small sets of standard conditions, allowing “decoupling” of prepress and printing. These conditions exist today. Kodak, Agfa-Gevaert, and Fuji Photo Image are manufacturers of targets in which:

The natural images include flesh tones, images with detail in the extreme high lights or shadows, neutral colors, colors in the brown and wood tone area, memory colors, complicated geometric shapes, fine detail, and highlight and shadow vignettes. The synthetic images include resolution charts, uniform vignettes in both the primary and secondary colors, and a physical representation of the CMYK data set defined in ISO 12642 for the characterization of 4-color process printing.74

In 1999, print has moved along from Payne’s 1904 recommendation to supply matching plates and inks. McDowell’s review notes that there could be as few as five reference conditions for press, ink and plate making allowing colour matching in a “wide diversity of printing organizations.” He says: “The increasing use of electronic data exchange, coupled with today’s computer power and color management technology, means that print-ready images no longer need to be the exact CMYK values needed by the printing plate.” In 2004 McDowell provides and overview of ANSI and ISO, noting that they “appear daunting and unwieldy to newcomers” but the “processes and procedures” are

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 254 important resources. He defines three approaches to standards: Consensus Standards, a publicly announced standard available to all interested parties; Industry Specifications, limited to membership and critical to the success of an industry; and, De Facto Standards, proprietary and developed by a single organisation.75 Adobe PDF is a De Facto Standard.

Colour Imaging Blackboxed

Allen Hurlburt, art director of Look magazine, says at the Third Seminar on Color in Print, Workshop, “Personally, I feel we are now are getting the best results with a good key plate that we could possibly get, better than we get with any existing three-colour process.” David Safran’s ignorance of technique demonstrates that colour is now blackboxed and invisible. He says: “I believe that computing the black printer is not that difficult. From what little I know of the scanner, I believe the principle is—wherever there is a portion of the image that has nearly equal quantity of three colours, that essentially is the black printer.”76 Clearly by 1966, the four-colour process has defeated three-colour and disegno and colore are blackboxed into graphic art technology, forever known as CMYK (Figure 18).

McDowell acknowledges inconsistencies in the standards and in their practice. However, the standards are the core of colour management and data exchange representing a huge advance on the 1990s, where photographic corporations controlled viewing conditions and practice was inconsistent. In practice, densitometry and colorimetry standards call for black backing but proofs are usually checked on a couple of sheets of printed stock; D50 or D65 white points do not accommodate fluorescence and UV reflection from stock, ink, and proofs; spectrometers cannot measure UV; proofs rarely match the print, so “experts” match subjectively. Ideally, the process should use colorimetric measurements to make matches. CIE can provide a method of “detectability” but it is a system of “acceptability” that requires definition. Colour management, printing, and photographic communities need to find solutions for “interoperability”, and anticipating the future, they will “…place greater emphasis on practical implementation than on theoretical ‘correctness’ and/or historical consistency.”77 McDowell in Overview of the ANSI and International Standards Process, 2006 delineates the actors and actants contained in colour’s blackbox:

JTCI/SC28 Information Technology/Office Equipment: for measurement of image quality attributes for hardcopy output
CIE: Division 1, Vision and Colour; Division 2, Measurement of Light and Radiation; and Division 8, Image Technology: for providing the primary tools needed for imaging and color measurement

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 255
ISO TC42 Photography: for standards in digital photography, digital camera characterisation and file formats
ISO TC130 Graphic Technology: for defining printing conditions and printing process control as well as imaging standards
ISO TC171: as originators of test targets used in image quality applications
IEC T100 Audio, Video and Multimedia Systems and Equipment: for electrotechnical aspects of multimedia systems
International Color Consortium: for the maintenance of CMYK and RGB characterisation data.78

The subsequent and concluding chapter will divulge the ultimate graphic art blackbox and reprise the question: Do we need a philosophy of colour technology?

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 256

Chapter Six References

1 ER Fisler, “New Scanners, Old Problems,” The Penrose Annual. The International Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. Herbert Spencer, vol. 68 (London: Lund Humphries, 1967) 192-93. 2 K Marx and F Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” (1888), . 3 MH Bruno, “Kodak’s Class of ‘31. Time–Springdale Colour Scanner (1980)” Penrose Annual (London: Northwood Publications, 1980) 60. 4 B Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) 27. 5 Latour, We Have Never Been Modern 116. 6 NS Amstutz, “Method of Reproducing Photgraphs,” Google Patents, ed. United States Patent Office (United States of America: Amstutz, NS, 1897). 7 Bain News Service and George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress), Belin Receiving a Telephotograph, 1920, Available: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2004000106/. 8 Eastman Kodak Company, The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction (Rochester: Eastman Kodak, Company, 1937) 4-5. 9 O Hassing and FO Nielsen, “The Hassing Electro-Mechanical Engraving Machine,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1938) 108-24. 10 FW Coppin, M Hepher, J Lee and DJ Wells, “A Comparison of Colour Masking and Hand Correction in the Four-Colour Half-Tone Process,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1950). 11 M Hepher and J Lee, “Tone and Colour Correction by Masking in Photogravure,” The Penrose Annual a Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1952). 12 SW Levine and MS Hotchkiss, “The Fairchild Scan-a-Sizer,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956) 115. Levine and Hotchkiss, “The Fairchild Variable Response Unit,” 116. 13 JS Friedman, History of Color Photography (Boston: The American Photographic Publishing Company, 1944) 280-81. 14 W Gamble, “A Review of Process Work, 1926,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1926) 4. Friedman, History of Color Photography 273-95, 280-81. Eastman Kodak Company, The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction. RWG Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour, Wiley-IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology, 6th ed. (Chichester, West Sussex, England; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004) 244-61. Warren Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” Neugebauer memorial seminar on Color reproduction, ed. Kazuo Sayanagi (Tokyo, Japan: Japan chapter of SPIE – The International Society for Optical Engineers, 1989), vol. 1184. 15 Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 256. 16 Friedman, History of Color Photography 273-95. Eastman Kodak Company, The Modern Masking Method of Correct Color Reproduction. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 244-61, 514-15. Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” vol. Burman Norton, “Photographic Key Plate for Offset Printing,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. W Gamble, vol. XX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited for AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1915). 17 DA Spencer, “Modern Processes of Colour Photography,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1949) 81.

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Chapter Six References

18 Friedman, History of Color Photography 283. J Bekk, “Colour Synthesis in Trichromatic Printing,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1940) 129. RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1938,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1938) 8. 19 Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1938,” 11. 20 GG Field, “The Evolution of Scanner Technology,” Journal of Photographic Science 43.56 (1986). 21 Hassing and Nielsen, “The Hassing Electro-Mechanical Engraving Machine,” 108-14. 22 RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1934,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1934) 24. RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1940,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1940) 1. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1954,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1954) 1-18. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1955,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1955) 1-16. RB Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1956,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956) 1- 20. 23 AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg, “Color Correction in Color Printing,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 38.4 (1948). 24 H Turner, “A System to Aid Colour Interpretation,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXXI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1929). 25 FGS Cackett, “A Colour Chart for Photo-Offset Work.” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts. Ed. Fishenden, RB. Vol. XLII. London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1940. Print. 26 AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg, “The Theory of Three-Colour Reproduction,” Optical Society of America 27.7 (1937). 27 DL MacAdam, “Photographic Aspects of the Theory of Three-Color Reproduction,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 28.11 (1938). 28 The Internet Movie Database, Star Wars: Episode V - the Empire Strikes Back, 1980, IMDb.com, Inc Available: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1258652416/tt0080684. 29 NI Korman, “The Digital Computer-Controlled Scanner for Colour Separation,” The Penrose Annual. Graphic Arts International, ed. Herbert Spencer, vol. 65 (London: Lund Humphries, 1972) 111-17. 30 Fisler, “New Scanners, Old Problems,” 286. 31 Fisler, “New Scanners, Old Problems,” 286. 32 Fisler, “New Scanners, Old Problems,” 286. 33 Field, “The Evolution of Scanner Technology.” 34 Hardy and Wurzburg, “The Theory of Three-Colour Reproduction.” 35 MacAdam, “Photographic Aspects of the Theory of Three-Color Reproduction.” 36 MacAdam, “Photographic Aspects of the Theory of Three-Color Reproduction.” 37 G Lucas, J Williams, L Neeson, R McCallum, J Lloyd, N Portman, I McDiarmid and E McGregor, Star Wars Episode I, the Phantom Menace, videorecording . Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment [distributor], [UK], 2001. 38 American Institute of Graphic Arts. “Transcript, Second Seminar on Color in Print. Copy Preparation for Color.” New York: American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1966. Print. 39 HEJ Neugebauer, “Theory of Masking for Color Correction. I. Masks Drawn from the Subject,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 42.10 (1952).

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Chapter Six References

AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg, “A Photoelectric Method for Preparing Printing Plates,” Journal of the Optical Society of America 38.4 (1948). 40 Hardy and Wurzburg, “A Photoelectric Method for Preparing Printing Plates.” 41 Hardy and Wurzburg, “Color Correction in Color Printing.” Hans EJ Neugebauer, “Die Theoretischen Grundlagen De Mehrfarben-Edruckes,” Z Wiss Photography 36.4 (1937). ME Demichel, “Untitled,” Procédé 26 (1924). RS Berns, FW Billmeyer and M Saltzman, Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley, 2000) 172-73. 42 Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” vol., 9. 43 Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” vol., 10. 44 Hardy and Wurzburg, “Color Correction in Color Printing.” Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” vol. HEJ Neugebauer, D Wyble and A Kraushaar, “The Theoretical Basis of Multicolor Letterpress Printing,” Color Research & Application 30.5 (2005). 45 AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg, “An Electronic Method of Colour Correction,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1949) 84. 46 Field, “The Evolution of Scanner Technology.” Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” vol. Harold E Haynes, “The RCA- Interchemical All-Electronic Colour Correction System,” The Penrose Annual a Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1952) 83-86. F Lissoni, “The Reaper and the Scanner: Adoption of New Technologies and the Nature of Incremental Innovations,” CESPRI (Centro Studi sue Processi di Internazionalizzazione) Working Paper 116 (2000). 47 R Hell, “The Klischograph Engraving Machine,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLVIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1954) 101-03. RHell, “The Colour Klischograph,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. LI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1957) 120. Field, “The Evolution of Scanner Technology.” 48 Field, “The Evolution of Scanner Technology.” Korman, “The Digital Computer-Contolled Scanner for Colour Separation.” 49 Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations.” 50 Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations.” 51 N Bishop, “The Time-Springdale Colour Scanner,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1951) 92. 52 Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations”. 53 Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1956.” WJ Sonn, Paradigms Lost: The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2006) 4, 136. A Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003,” Proceedings of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts, TAGA (2005). 54 Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003.” 55 Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003.” Rhodes, “Fifty Years of the Neugebauer Equations,” vol. Lissoni, “The Reaper and the Scanner: Adoption of New Technologies and the Nature of Incremental Innovations.” W Gamble, “A Review of Process Work, 1927,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1927) 4.

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Chapter Six References

56 PS Pfiffner, Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story (Berkeley, California: Peachpit Press, 2003) 33, 36-39, 54-56. Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003.” 57 Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003.” H Kipphan, Handbook of Print Media: Technologies and Production Methods: Including 1275 Figures, Mostly in Color and 92 Tables (Berlin; London: Springer, 2001) 82. 58 Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003”. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour 540. 59 Bjurstedt, “Converging Technologies in Prepress from 1980 to 2003,” vol. Pfiffner, Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story 139-44, 95-97. 60 DA Spencer, “British Standard Four & Three-Colour Letterpress Printing Inks,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1950) 84-87. 61 DA Spencer, “British Standard Offset-Lithographic Inks,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. L (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1956) 143-45. 62 A Payne, “Plates, Filters and Inks: Their Relative Importance in Three-Colour Work.,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. An Illustrated Review of the Graphic Arts. The Process Year Book, ed. W Gamble (London: Penrose & Company, 1904-5). S Ray, “Standardizing the Original,” Percy Lund, Humphries & Co Ltd for AW Penrose & Co Ltd, ed. W Gamble, vol. XVII (London: AW Penrose and Company Limited, 1913-14) 66. Penrose Annual Advertorial, “Two Aids for the Three-Colour Block Maker,” Penrose Pictorial Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. W Gamble, vol. XVII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited for AW Penrose & Company Limited, 1913-14) 165. AE Bawtree, “An Improved Method for Measuring Colour,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1921). AB Klein, “The Munsell Colour System and the Need for the Standardisation of Colours,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXIX (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1927) 58. I Cox, “Can Trichromatic Inks Be Standardised?,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXIII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1921). I Cox, “Standardising of Three-Colour Inks,” Penrose’s Annual. The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXXI (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1929). JR Riddell, “Standardising Three-Colour Ink Form the Printer’s Point of View,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930) 72. 63 W Gamble, “The Editor’s Review, 1930,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930) 12. 64 WMG Eade, “The Standardisation of Trichromatic Inks,” Penrose’s Annual. The Year’s Progress in the Graphic Arts, ed. W Gamble, vol. XXXII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1930). 65 Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1934,” 33. RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1935,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XXXVII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1935) 7. HM Cartwright, “Colour Measurement,” Penrose’s Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLII (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1940). Spencer, “British Standard Four & Three-Colour Letterpress Printing Inks,” 84-87. RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1950,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Company Limited, 1950) 5. Fishenden, “Editorial Commentary, 1954.”

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Chapter Six References

66 Wvon Egidy (discussion leader) and American Institute of Graphic Arts, “Color Preparation for Magazines,” Second Seminar on Color in Print (New York: American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1966). D Way (discussion leader) and American Institute of Graphic Arts, “Color Preparation for Books,” Second Seminar on Color in Print. Copy preparation for color. (New York: American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1966). RM Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers with a Chapter on Modern Processes by William Gamble (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing in association with Adam Hilger, 1910 & 1983). 67 FR Clapper (discussion leader) and American Institute of Graphic Arts, “Properties of Transparencies,” Third Seminar on Color in Print (New York and Detroit: American Institute of Graphic Arts; Safran Printing Company, 1966). 68 P Rimmer, “CTP and Digital Workflow at Offset Alpine, Sydney, Australia,” informal conversation with JH Martin (Sydney: 2009). 69 DQ McDowell, “Summary of Color Definition Activity in the Graphic Arts,” Image Handling and Reproduction Systems Integration (SPIE, 1991), vol. 1460. 70 DQ McDowell, “Graphic Arts Standards Update for 1995,” Color Hard Copy and Graphic Arts IV (SPIE, 1995), vol. 2413. 71 DQ McDowell, “Graphic Arts Standards Update: 1996,” Color Imaging: Device-Independent Color, Color Hard Copy, and Graphic Arts (SPIE, 1996), vol. 2658. 72 McDowell, “Graphic Arts Standards Update: 1996,” vol. 73 DQ McDowell, “Graphic Arts Color Standards Update: 1997,” Color Imaging: Device- Independent Color, Color Hard Copy, and Graphic Arts II (SPIE, 1997), vol. 74 DQ McDowell, “Graphic Arts Color Standards Update: 1998,” Color Imaging: Device- Independent Color, Color Hardcopy, and Graphic Arts III (SPIE, 1998), vol. 3300. 75 DQ McDowell, “Graphic Arts Color Standards Update: 1999,” Color Imaging: Device- Independent Color, Color Hardcopy, and Graphic Arts IV (SPIE, 1999), vol. 3648. David Q McDowell, “Overview of the ANSI and International Standards Process,” eds. Yoichi Miyake and D Rasmussen, 1 ed. (San Jose, CA, USA: SPIE, 2004), vol. 5294. 76 D Safran (moderator), AF Hurlburt (moderator) and American Institute of Graphic Arts, “Workshop,” Third Seminar on Color in Print (New York and Detroit: American Institute of Graphic Arts and Safran Print Company, 1966), vol., 16. 77 DQ McDowell, “Viewing Conditions, Colorimetric Measurements, and Profile Making: The Conundrum of Standards Versus Practical Realities,” Image Quality and System Performance III (SPIE, 2006), vol. 6059 60590H-1. 78 McDowell, “Overview of the ANSI and International Standards Process.”

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 261

Figure 1: William Blake, Newton, Print, tempera, watercolour, and graphite, c1795.1

7. Conclusion

But, in the mean time, you defer too much to my ability in searching into this subject. What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in considering the colours of thin plates. If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton’s letter to Robert Hooke, 1675/6.2

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 262 You press the button. We do the rest.

Albert Abram’s 1920s “Black Box” was a diagnostic device that used acoustics of the abdomen, an amplifier, and variable resistors. A condition of purchase for potential Oscilloclasts was that the contents should not be inspected. The 1937 computing machine hypothesis of Alan Turing (1912-1954) evolved into the ultimate blackbox, the digital computer. The typewriter and telegraph, the same technologies that transformed print, as well as the punch cards from Herman Hollerith’s (1860-1901) tabulating machine’s – based on Joseph (Jacquard) Marie Charles’s (1753-1834) loom – became, in 1946, the programmable digital computer ENIAC of John W Mauchly (1907-1980) and J Presper Eckert’s (1919-1995). Computers provided the processing power required for two epoch-changing technologies in the twentieth century: the atomic bomb and the image scanner.3

The printer as a “mere mechanic” instigated two paradigm shifts: one in the fifteenth century with the reproduction of text and images, and one in the twentieth century – the reproduction of natural colours. The colour story has never been fully told, it is a convoluted and complex tale that is not reducible to accounts of wine presses and shopping lists. The achievement of repeatable colour verisimilitude is accomplished by subsuming two millennia of optical research into two blackboxes: the measurement of human colour perception – colorimetry, and the mimicry of subjective three-colour retinal processes – Kodachrome. In colorimetry Wright and Guild’s seventeen observers are reduced to a mathematicophysical description; as an eliminitivist standard it is the most adequate instrument for an average purpose, invisible and blackboxed into CIE1931. Kodachrome and its offspring become a de facto colour standard blackboxing the three-colour historical practice of Le Blon, chromolithography, and trichromatic printing. Subjective processes of three-colour photography are so successful that its technique becomes invisible as the ubiquitous colour snap. Colour reproduction is democratised, made available to all as a most adequate instrument for an average purpose.

FE Ives’s aspiration for imaginary graphic art primaries reaches fruition when CIE’s imaginary colour space is blackboxed as a colour conversion space for Adobe PostScript. In PostScript Language Reference Manual Second Edition, 1990 John Warnock & Chuck Geschke’s diminutive description of PostScript as only one advancement in the history of printing, is like saying that letterpress was one advancement in the history of writing. PostScript Level 1 was notionally colour-independent, as colour was determined

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 263 according to the processing devices. It did provide rudimentary colour conversion algorithms for device mismatches, in a Maxwell-like model: red=1-cyan, blue=1-yellow, and green=1-magenta.4 Level 2 integrated international CIE standards from the “graphic arts, television, and printing industries”. Because CIE colour spaces were derived from human visual perception, PostScript was expected “to produce consistent results on different colour output devices, independent of variations in marking technology, ink colourants, or screen phosphors”; with the goal for “…output that accurately reproduces the requested CIE-based colour values as perceived by a human observer”. Before Hewlett Packard released the DeskJet 500c in 1991 desktop colour printing was an expensive and specialist process; by 2000 a paradigm shift had occurred, Hewlett Packard held 80 per cent of the colour printing market and high-end Colour Laserjets were entering the market. In 1993, Apple introduced ColorSync, providing a Colour Match Method (CMM) through XYZ colour space between devices with the goal of making colour matching transparent to the user. The same year Apple, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Agfa-Gevaert NV, Eastman Kodak Company, Microsoft Corporation founded ICC, establishing the profile connections space (PCS) that connects devices through a “canonical device space”. Michael Stokes in Real World Colour Management, 1998 says, “…ICC provides a solid foundation for sophisticated, flexible, cross-platform, cross-vendor and extendible colour communication based on the human visual system as its common virtual colour space.”5 Voilà! – ICC, the most adequate instrument for an average purpose. Human colour perception is now blackboxed. Repeatable colour verisimilitude achieved. The hand of the craftsman eliminated.

Latour’s ANT defines a network as transformations between actors and actants. CIE colour spaces are hybrids of science, society, politics, and human perception characteristics encoded into machines as a classic Latourian hybrid. Boyle’s machines are monsters unleashed, we think them benign, we have trusted their opinion; freed, they are now our equals. Digital technology in our Coding Age transforms phenomena for transmission; this syntax change will have a social influence commensurate with the transformation of knowledge to print. When we use software like Adobe PhotoShop, an invisible network of actors and actants performs the Latourian hybrid dance. These actors and actants cast shadows on the wall of a Platonic technological cave. Graphic artists are technological prisoners: we cannot see the code, only the coloured shadows. Are graphic artists technorealists who believe in these shadows? Are our decisions mediated by the code within our technology like Searle in his Chinese Room? Blackboxing democratises colour, but will fixation of a standard cause colour language death, as fixation took the

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 264 life of Latin? Are our computers another camera obscura showing us the duality of knowledge? Is colour a quality of the projecting machine, a quality of humans, or a shadow of our own perception idealised and blackboxed and projected back at us? Are we appendages who merely press buttons, letting machines do the rest? Are graphic designers an anachronism, like medieval schoolmen – no longer needed and unwilling to go away?

In the nineteenth century graphic artists became disgruntled about their loss of craft when the print industry adopted steam presses and stereotyping. Pressmen in the 1930s at Australian Consolidated Press – after the installation of new technology – four-colour gravure presses – poured sand into them. Mid-century replacement of hot metal by photosetting instigated rolling strikes throughout the USA. In 1951, Fishenden feared the replacement of the “printer craftsman by intelligent robots”. When colour reproduction was blackboxed with the adoption of computer-to-plate (CTP), there was silence. Why? Because when a technology is successful it becomes invisible. Have we agreed not to look inside the box?6

Neither science nor philosophy has provided an adequate explanation of colour beyond a description of causality between object and subject. Despite his recourse to contemporary technology Hilbert’s demand for colour realism has proven to be insurmountably complex. Zeno at the end of Plato’s Parmenides describes complexity in this manner: There is the One and the Many; the One cannot exist without the Many and the Many without the One; the One and the Many are one- and-the-same. In the place of The One can be inserted Plato’s Forms, or truth, or love, or Democracy, or God(s); however in this thesis it is colour: There is Colour and the Coloured; Colour cannot exist without the Coloured and the Coloured without Colour; Colour and the Coloured are one-and-the-same. “Do we need a philosophy of colour?” asked Wright in 1965. No! Because there are phenomena that exist that are beyond the realms of science and philosophy and colour is one of them. All we can truly say is that Colour-is. Do graphic artists need a philosophy of colour technology? Yes, a philosophy of technology is achievable because it describes the nonhumans we have created. Would graphic designers benefit from one? Yes. Because when a technology changes our mediation of these nonhumans also changes. Accordingly to know these nonhumans is also to know us. A philosophy of technology would return graphic artists to their earlier

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 265 craftsmen state of the Latourian pre-modern. Our tools would transform into extensions of ourselves rather than objects we perceive. 7

Chapter Seven References

1 W Blake, Newton, 1795, Available: http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8CJGczI9NzldLS1WEDhzTnkrX3kjdll%2 FdSw%3D. 2 A Koyré, “An Unpublished Letter of Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton,” Isis 43.4 (1952). 3 AAG Morrice, Black Box, 2001, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t185.e65. Eniac, 2008, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t11.e1717. MS Freeman, Jacquard, 1997, Oxford University Press, Available: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t31.e186. AM Turing, “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem,” Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 42.2 (1936): 10. E Webster, Print Unchained : Fifty Years of Digital Printing, 1950-2000 and Beyond: A Saga of Invention and Enterprise (West Dover, VT: DRA of Vermont, 2000) 18. 4 EG: Red equals one minus Cyan 5 Adobe Systems, Postscript Language Reference Manual 185, 294. JP Allebach and BE Rogowitz eds., Device-Independent Color in PostScript: SPIE. Webster, Print Unchained: Fifty Years of Digital Printing, 1950-2000 and Beyond: A Saga of Invention and Enterprise 166-67. RJ Motta and HA. Berberian eds., Apple Color Management System (Colorsync): SPIE. International Colour Consortium, ICC Members, 2011, Available: http://www.color.org/iccmembers.xalter. M Stokes, “Color Management in the Real World: sRGB, ICM2, ICC, ColorSync, and Other Attempts to Make Color Management Transparent,” eds. BE Rogowitz and TN Pappas, 1 ed. (San Jose, CA, USA: SPIE, 1998), vol. 3299. 6 RB Fishenden, “Editor’s Review, 1950,” The Penrose Annual. A Review of the Graphic Arts, ed. RB Fishenden, vol. XLIV (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., 1950) 1-2. SH Steinberg and J Trevitt, Five Hundred Years of Printing, New ed. (London New Castle, DE: British Library; Oak Knoll Press, 1996). B Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer: The Young Master (Pymble, N.S.W.: HarperCollins, 2000). WJ Sonn, Paradigms Lost: The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word (Lanham, Md. Scarecrow Press, 2006). 7 Plato and B Jowett, Parmenides, (Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library, 2002), Available: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/aut/plato.html.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 266 8. Glossary

∆E: A symbol for the value of the total calculated difference between two colour stimuli

À la poupée: The hand colouring of a printing plate that usually prints in one impression

Achromat: A lens that strives to focus all wavelengths of light to the same point

Actinic: A change in a substance brought about by light

Actinometer: A device for measuring the change in substance caused by light

Analogue: Representing a physical event with another physical event, such as a dial representing weight of pressure

Anastigmat lens: A lens that corrects astigmatism

Albertype: Collotype

Anode: A positive electrode

Aquatint: An etching process that uses resins to break plate surface into a texture with design painted with a resist, usually bitumen

Aqueous humour: The watery part of the eye

Astigmatic: A lens without the ability to focus wavelengths of light at the same distance

Autotype: Brand name for carbon print photography

Autotypie: Brand name for halftone letterpress

Axon: A nerve cell that conducts stimulus away to other cells

Base art: Artwork used for the alignment of overlays of hand drawn artwork and overprints, generally prints as a black plate

Bichromate of potash: Potassium bichromate

Bichromated gelatine: Photographic emulsion of gelatine and potassium bichromate

Big Science: Expensive scientific research involving extensive teams and machines

Blackboxing: A term appropriated from engineers by social science, to describe the effect of systems, process, theory or technological invisibility that comes with systems, process, theory or technological success

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 267 Bleaching out: Photographic process where the emulsion lightens on exposure to light

Blocks: Woodblocks and metal engravings for letterpress

Calotype: William Henry Fox Talbot’s process of producing photographs, sometimes also called Talbotype, with silver iodide emulsion and fixed by hyposulphite of soda

Camera obscura: A darkened box or room with a hole or lens that projects the image of the external world on to a screen inside, a precursor to the camera

Camera lucida: A device patented by William Hyde Wollaston, possibly derivative of a device described by Johannes Kepler. It uses a prism to allow tracing scenes outdoors.

Carbon bond: Carbon atoms bonded at their electrons

Carbon prints: Light-sensitive pigmented gelatine treated with potassium bichromate

Cartesian space: Space defined by three coordinates XYZ

Cathode: Negative electrode or electron tube

Catoptric: Relating to a mirror or reflector, or to optical reflexion.

China paper: French term for India paper, thin paper used for packing objects imported from China or India

Chiaroscuro: Italian term from of chiaro meaning light or clear and scuro meaning dark which refers to the light and dark tones in a drawing, painting or engraving.

Chiaroscuro woodcut: a print technique which creates a tonal range by the printing of separate wood blocks

Chroma: Part of Munsell’s nomenclature, meaning intensity of hue

Chromaticity: A colour specification independent of it illuminant

Chromalin: Mid-century pigment proof

Chromo-xylography: Surface printing, typographic printing

Chromolithography: Composite printing of several hues from several lithographic stones

Chromoscope: A device by Ives and du Haruon used to composite all three-colour red, green, and blue images

Chromotypogravure: A form of photolithography

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 268 CIE: Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage or International Commission on Illumination (ICI)

CIE1931: XYZ colour space derived by Wright and Guild

CIE1976: Opponent colour space also known as CIELab and CIELuv

CIE2000: A more uniform version of CIE1976

Cliché: Stereotype block

CMYK: Printing colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black, see four-colour below

Collodion: A film of cellulose nitrate made by dissolving the cellulose nitrate in ethanol

Collotype: A form of lithography using a heavy plate glass which is coated with light-sensitive gelatine and exposed to light under a negative, appears to be used primarily for monochrome and hand coloured photography or for the reproduction of artworks in three colours

Colorimetry: The branch of quantitative physics that defines human colour perception through measurement

Colour records: Usually continuous tone negatives that record one narrow part of the spectrum

Contract proof: Proofs that provide an agreement between printer and client as being correct, representing an agreement as to accurate colour, see printers proof

Copperplate: An engraving or etching on copper

Cornea: Transparent part of the eye in front of the lens

Crystalline lens: The lens of the eye

Cyanine: A blue dye

Cyanotype: A blue photographic process invented by John FW Herschel

Daguerreotype: Photographic process by Daguerre of Paris in 1839, that uses a silver plate sensitised by iodine, and exposed to mercury vapour

Dendrite: Part of a neuron that receives impulses

Desktop publishing: (DTP) the use of inexpensive scanners, laser printers, and layout software

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 269 Diapositive: A transparent positive photographic picture, such as those used as lantern slides

Dioptric: Focusing light through lenses, optics concerned with refraction

Disegno: drawing, design, or conception of an idea

Dye imbibition: Dye transfer photography

Dye transfer: Wash-off relief printing and dye imbibition photography

Electrode: A conductor of electricity

Electrolysis: A chemical reaction resulting from electricity

Electrotype: An improvement upon William Ged’s (1690-1749) plaster and Firmin Didot’s (1764-1836), using metal stereotype of letterpress matrices; a process commercialised by Charles Stanhope (1753-1816). Electrotype was simultaneously invented in 1839 by Moritz Hermann Jacobi (1801-1874) and shortly after by Thomas Spencer, CJ Jordan, and Thomas F Adams, all inspired by Alessandro Volta’s (1745-1827) voltaic pile (battery) of 1800.

Engraving: Intaglio

Eosin: Red dye

Epistemology: Branch of philosophy dealing with the origin and limits of human knowledge.

Etching: Creating a design on a plate by drawing into a resist, usually bitumen, then incising the plate surface with acid

Euclidean space: In mathematics a space defined in three-dimensional terms

Film speed: Standardised rating of the actinic effect of light on an emulsion

Fixation: Term derived from Elizabeth Eisenstein’s use of the term “fixity” in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 1979. Blackboxing of an observation or theory as an unquestionable fact by institutions or society by standardisation was until recent times primarily achieved through printing

Four-colour: Printing processes using cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks, CMYK

Fraunhofer lines: Dark lines in the spectrum resulting from light absorption by the sun’s chromosphere and the earth’s atmosphere.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 270 Fuzzy logic: Based on fuzzy set theory where a proposition has a graded validity rather than a binary yes–no parameter

Gamut: The number of colours that can be produced by the mixture of two or more lights or pigments

Geometrical optics: The study of the geometry of reflection and refraction of light which assumes that light travels in straight lines

Graphic art: A collective term for practitioners of reproductive arts, such as printers, platemakers, illustrators, and graphic designers, who produce image masters for large numbers of reiterations

Graphic Designers: Members of the graphics arts industry, profession or trade with a professional focus on message delivery and aesthetics

Gravure: Continuous tone printing process

Grey component replacement: (GCR) Removal of CMY from grey areas of an image to be replaced by K

Gutta-percha: Gum from trees

H&D curves: Measurements of the actinic effect of light on photographic emulsion by Ferdinand Hurter (1844–98) and Vero C Driffield (1848–1915)

Heliochrome: Photogravure in colour

Heliography: Photogravure

Heliotype: Photograph from sensitised gelatine

Herschel effect: Where a latent photographic image in an emulsion which is not sensitised is destroyed by red light

High-light process: Halftone in which the lightest part appear white

Hue: Part of Munsell’s nomenclature, meaning red, yellow, green, blue and purple, and their intermediary mixtures.

Human: One part of the human–nonhuman (subject–object) relationship requiring symmetrical examination of humans, their objects and institutions

Human–nonhuman: A subject–object relationship distinctive in modern societies requiring symmetrical examination of humans, their objects and institutions

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 271 ICC: International Color Consortium, the founding members being Adobe Systems Incorporated, Agfa-Gevaert NV, Apple Inc, Eastman Kodak Company, Microsoft Corporation

ICI: International Commission on Illumination or Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage (CIE)

Incunabula: Earliest stages, (lit: Swaddling clothes); also, books printed before 1500

Induction: An analysis that moves by elimination from generalities to specifics

India paper: English name for China paper, thin paper used for packing objects imported from China or India

Inline: Multiple printing presses in a row

Intaglio: Carving into a metal plate and printing from its surface

Integral film: A film with three emulsions of different sensitivity on a single support

Interference: Where two waves interfere with another, causing standing waves

Iris: Coloured part of the eye used to control the amount of light that enters

Isochromatic plate: A plate sensitive to one colour of light

IT8: International standard for device calibration

Lab: Standard that describes lightness, red/green, blue/yellow opponency

Lake: Red pigment

Lenticular stereoscope: 3D photography

Lenticular: Colour photography that uses thin strips of coloured filters

Letterpress: Relief printing; modular system of typesetting that usually prints from a mould or stereotype of the type matrix

Line art: Artwork that prints only in black solids

Lithography: Originally, printing on a limestone surface with designs drawn in a waxy medium and the stone slightly etched; any printing process that relies on the antithesis of fatty inks and water

Litterati: Men of letters; the learned class as a whole

Local colour: Colour contained within objects and contained within drawn edges in painting

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 272 Look-up tables: (LUT) An array of coloured swatches to determine colour characteristics of a device and allow colour matches between input and output

Makeready: The final preparation of plates for printing

Masking: 1. The use of negatives or positive records to exclude part of the colour spectrum from a printing negative 2. Use of a resist to block out areas of a printing plate usually from acid etching

Matchprint: Brand name of proofing process

Mathmaticophysical: A reductive approach to physics that describes phenomena using numbers

Metamers: Two spectral mixtures that produce the same colour sensation. E.g. There are many three-colour pigment combinations that will mix to grey

Metaphysics: (lit: beyond physics) Philosophy that deals with the first principles: being, knowing, identity, time, space.

Millimicron: Nanometre

Monochromatic light: Light of a narrow wave band

Monochromatic-plus-white: Colour matching with mixtures of luminance (white) and hue

Nanometre: Nm, one thousand-millionth of a metre

NCS: Natural Colour System

Nonhuman: One part of the human–nonhuman (subject–object) relationship, requiring symmetrical examination of humans, their objects and institutions

Õchron: A range of hues from red to yellow to green

Offset: Printing where the master plate is transferred to another surface, usually rubber, before transferring to paper

One-sensed: A term coined from Marshal McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy from his repeated use of the phrase “one sense”

Opponency: Part of visual process first proposed by Ewald Hering, that asserts that red/green, yellow/blue, and black/white are opposing sensations that can cancel each other out

Optic nerve: Nerve from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus then the visual cortex

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 273 Optics: The branch of physics that deals with the properties and phenomena of light

Orthochromatic: Film sensitive to all visible light except red

OSA: Optical Society of America

Ostwald Color System: Colour sphere with the hues aligned around the hemisphere using Hering’s opponency

Panchromatic: Film sensitive to all visible colours of the spectrum

PDL: Printer description language

Phenomenology: Systematic study of phenomena (more recently, everyday experiences).

Philologist: Historical linguist

Photo-Chromotypy: Letterpress using photography

Photoengraving: A process by which an image is photographically transferred to a plate for relief printing

Photoglyphy: Patent name for Talbot’s halftone process

Photographer: Someone who uses photosensitive media such as photosensitive emulsions and electronic recording devices

Photogravure: A process by which an image is photographically transferred to a plate for printing from the etched recess

Photolithography: Lithography in which the image is photographically transferred to the printing surface for lithographic printing

Physical optics: Study of the nature of light: diffraction, interference and polarisation

Planographic printing: Lithography

Platen press: Letterpress

Pneuma: Vital spirit and/or the soul

Prepress: term used in the printing and publishing for the processes and procedures that occur between layout and printing

Printer’s devil: Young assistant in a printing workshop

Printer’s proofs: Proof supplied to ascertain the accurate replication of artwork and the success of the colour reproduction

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 274 Resist: A substance ainted on the surface of a printing plate to protect it during etching, usually bitumen

Reticulation: A pattern in the physical texture of gelatine that occurs upon drying

Retina: Photosensitive part of the eye

Retouching: Manual adjustment of a printing negative or positive, or the fine etching of a printing plate, to achieve correct or desirable tonal and hue range

Rhodopsin: Visual purple, a photosensitive protein in the retina

Rotogravure: Gravure plates bent around an impression roller

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis: Culturally relative theory of colour naming

Separation negatives: Continuous tone negatives separated into three- or four-colour records used to produce halftone negatives

Spectrometer, spectrograph or spectroscope: A device for measuring wavelength and energy of light waves

Stripping-film: A gelatine emulsion on a paper support that can be stripped off in processing.

Surface spectral reflectance: (SSR) A method for measuring the spectral reflectance of an object when the lighting source is unknown (Maloney & Wandell, 1986)

Standing wave: Where two waves appear to remain fixed while others around them vibrate

Symmetry: In sociology, the tenet that the same method of explanation should be applied to both true and false beliefs

Talbotype: See Calotype

Three-colour printing: Printing in red, yellow, and blue

Three-colour theory: Trichromatic theory or Young–Helmholtz theory

Transverse wave: A wave at right angles to the direction of force; in light waves, electric fields are at right angles to magnetic fields

Trichromatic printing: An application of trichromatic theory, printing in three colours, red, yellow, blue (or violet) and separating the colours using complementary filters

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 275 Trichromatic theory: A theory of colour vision that claims that in the retina of the eye there are three light-sensitive structures responsive to red, green, and blue light. Also called the three-colour theory or the Young-Helmholtz theory

Typographic printing: A term that usually refers to image reproduction by letterpresses

Under colour removal: (UCR) Removal of CMY from black areas of an image to be replaced by K

Unique hues: Unmixed colours basically: red, green, yellow, and blue. Bluish-green is not unique. Orange is unique as it is cognitively different to yellowish-red.

UI: User interface, usually part of computer program

Value: Part of Munsell’s nomenclature, meaning grey scale

Vector: A quantity having direction and magnitude usually in Cartesian space

Vision: The complete neural process from the retina to the visual cortex

Visual cortex: The part of the cerebral cortex used to interpret stimulus from the retina

Visual spectrometer: A device that uses humans to perceive hue changes

Vitreous humour: Lens

Wash-off relief: Dye transfer photography

Wavefront: All the points aligned on an advancing wave

Weber–Fechner law: The law stating that a geometric increase in perception requires an logarithmic increase in sensation

Young–Helmholtz theory: Three-colour theory or trichromatic theory

Zincography: Vague term referring to zinc plate printing that is etched, engraved, or coated with a lithographic emulsion

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 276

Appendix: Timeline

The following timeline is neither a definitive nor an exhaustive outline of the evolution of colour reproduction. It is primarily impressionistic; created as part of my process of “naive induction”, in which linkages are established between a fifteenth-century playing card hand-coloured with pigments, and CIELAB’s imaginary three-colour primaries and opponent colour space and its application to CTP.

The Code is not Coloured: Blackboxing Colour, Light, Graphic Arts and Modernity 277 Aristotle 330 Meteorologica, three-colour scales, De Sensu Et Sensibilibus, seven-colour linear scale

Chalcidius Democritus 325 370 Chalcidii Viri Clarissimi Luculenta Timæi Platonis Traductio, & Plato: Timaeus Ejusdem Argutissima Explanatio, references to opponency and 360 .ve primary colours

370 1 325 Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Albadi: Ten Treatises on Ophthalmology 1000

Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham: De Apectibus, Kitāb al-Manāẓir 1034

Theophilus 1120 De Diversis Artibus, tweleve-colour scale for the rainbow

Robert Grosseteste 1230 De Colore, sixteen-colour linear scale

John Peckham: Perspectiva Communis 1240

Roger Bacon: Perspectiva 1260

Witelo: Perspectiva 1278

Thoedoric of Frieberg 1310 Tractus de Coloribus, six-part linear scale

Cennino Cennini: Il Libro dell’ Arte 1390 Diamond Sutra 868 The St. Christopher Woodcut: earliest dated print 1423

Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdallah ibn Sina 1015 Kitab al-Shifa, seven-colour Aristotlean scale

868 1000 1200 1423 ES Meister: Ars Morendi woodcut in brown 1450

Johannes Gutenberg: 42-line Bible, some colour printing in red 1456

Fust and Schoeffer: Latin Psalter printed in red and black 1457

(
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+()&2ni Portrait 1434

Maso Finiguerra: Fight for the Hose, inventor of engraving 1464

Leon Battista Alberti 1435 Della Pictura Libri Tre, distinguished hue from lightness and darkness

1434 1440 1450 1460 1464 Marsilio Ficino 1480 Opera, twelve-part linear ligthness scale of hues

Ugo da Carpi, Diogenes, chiaroscuro woodcut in four shades of green 1480

Leonardo da Vinci: Adoration of the Magi 1481

Ehrhard Ratdolt: Sacrobsco by John Holywood, multicoloured print 1486

Schoolmaster printer: The Book of St Albans, multicolour print 1486

Playing Card 1480

Hieronimus de Sanctis and Santritter: multicolour printing 1488

1480 1481 1482 1483 1484 1485 1486 1487 1488 Johannes Hamman dictus Herzog: Repetitis Tituli, Letterpress 1490

Jean Du Pré: Hoae of BVM: decorative borders in green brown and red 1490

Claude Jaumer: A Liber Meditationum, borders in four colour 1499

Leonardo da Vinci 1500 Tratto Della Pictura, six-part linear colour scale

Hans Burgkmair: Equestrian Portrait of the Emperor Maximilian Woodcut, in black and white on blue-tinted paper 1508

Bonetus Locatellus: Astronomical treatise 1490 Jost de Necker: St George, chiaroscuro 1508 Claude Jaumer: Liber Mediationum, Letterpress 1490 Lucas Cranach: St Chrisotopher, chiaroscuro woodcut 1509 Pedro de Colonia: Vocabularia, Letterpress 1490

John Herzog: Repetis Tituli, with red, brown, and green 1490

Palentia: Vocabulario, border in four colours 1490

G de Trindo: Multicolour printing 1491

1490 1495 1500 1505 1509 Hans Baldung: Witches Sabbath, chiaroscuro woodcut printed in black and grey-green 1510

Daniel I Hopfer: Three Worthy Christians, attributed by Vasari as the inventor of etching 1516

Desiderius Erasmus: The New Testament in Latin, printed by JW Wetchlin (Pilgrim) The Skull, coloured woodcut Johannes Froben 1510 1516

1510 1511 1512 1513 1514 1515 1516 Marcantonio Raimondi: The Climbers 1519

Albrecht Aldorfer: Our Lady of Ratisbon woodcut 1520

Sigmund Grimm, Hans Weiditz: The Coat-of-Arms of Cardinal Matthäus Lang Von Wellenburg, woodcut seven colours 1520

Giuseppe Nicola: Hercules Strangling the Nemean Lion, chiaroscuro woodcut 1525

Antonio Telesio: De Coloribus Libellus 1528

1519 1520 1521 1522 1523 1524 1525 1526 1527 1528 Jacques de Guyse: Chroniques de Haynau, four-colour woodcut title page 1532

Paolo Pino: Dialogue on Painting 1548

Tiziano Vecelli: Danaë, mother of Perseus 1554

Girolamo Cardano 1558 De Subtilitate De Rerum Varietate De Gemmis et Coloribus, Linear colour system

Hieronymous Cardunus: De Gemmis et Coloribus 1563

Girolamo Cardano 1563 De Gemmis et Coloribus, nine-part linear colour scale

Lodovico Dolce 1565 GE Vincento: Christ Healing Lepers, chiaroscuro woodcut 1530 Dialogo Della Pittura, seven-part linear colour scale

1530 1535 1540 1545 1550 1555 1560 1565 Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo 1584 Tattato Dell’art, seven-part scale with warm/cool divisions

Hendrik Goltzius: Hercules killing Cacus, chiaroscuro woodcut 1588

Federico Barocci: Rest on the Flight into Egypt Domenico Fontana: Della Transportatione dell'Obelisco Vaticano 1580 1590

1580 1585 1590 Johannes Kepler: Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena Quibus Astronomiae Pars Optica traditur 1604

Sigfridius Aronis Forsius 1611 Physica, colour circle of hues and mixtures to white and black

François D'Aguilon 1613 Opticorum Libri Sex, Linear scale after Boethius, three primaries and mixtrue with black and white

L Buis: Virgin and Infant, chiaroscuro woodcut, three colours 1623

George Lallemand: attempted to create three-colour press 1625

Andrea Andreani: The triumph of Julius Caesar, chirascuro woodcut in nine sections 1599

J Baptistam Bidellium: G Aselli, De Lactibus Sive Lacteis 1627

VA Scarmilionus 1601 De Coloribus

1599 1605 1610 1615 1620 1627 Robert Fludd 1629 Medicina Catholica, Aristotelian an Scale bent into a circle

Frederick Bloemaert: The Drawing Apprentice. Title page for the Drawing Book of Abraham Bloemaert, chiaroscuro woodcut 1630

Abraham Bosse: Developed a method of masking etching 1636

Christoffel Jegher & Peter Paul Rubens: Bust of a Bearded Man, chiaroscuro woodcut 1636

René Descartes: Traité de l’homme 1630

1629 1630 1631 1632 1633 1634 1635 1636 René Descartes: Discours de la Méthode: Pour Bien Conduire sa Raison et Chercher la Vérité Dans les Sciences 1637

Bartolomeo Coriolano: St Jerome, chiaroscuro woodcut in three blocks 1637

John Schott: Lectura super liber decretalium earliest chiaroscuro woodcut title page 1637

Hercules Segers: Rocky Lanscape: pink, blue, olive-green 1638

Georg Philipp Harsdörffer: Peristromata Turcica, Turkish carpet engraving in red and black 1639

Ludwig von Siegen: Inventor of mezzotint Amelia Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel 1642

1637 1638 1639 1640 1641 1642 Athanasius Kircher 1646 #$

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Jan Lutma: Inventor of stipple engraving. Rembrandt, Etching  
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Robert Boyle: Air pump 1660

1646 1650 1655 1660 Robert Boyle: Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours. First Occasionally Written, among Some Other Essays, to a Friend; and Now Suffer'd to Come Abroad as the Beginning of an Experimental History of Colours 1664

Johanes Teyler: Large Classical Urn, hand coloured engravings 1670

Zacharias Traber 1675 $.21/
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1664 1670 1676 John Moxon: Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy Works Applied to the Art of Printing 1683

Johannes Zahn 1685 !1)1/
.0'8cialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium, colour triangle, white, red, black mixing to grey at peak

Richard Waller 1686 A Catalogue of Simple Mixt Colours with a Specimen of Each ,),1.
.#8xt to it Proper Name

Christaan Huygens: Traité de la Lumière 1690

Isaac Newton 1704 Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the #9exions, Refractions, +9exions and Colours of Light

1684 1690 1695 1700 1704 CB 1708 Traité de la Peinture en Mignature, representation of Newton’s cirlce in pigment mixtures

JG and JH Häffner: Raymundi Lulli Opera Omnia, letterpress 1722

Elisha Kirkall: mixed printing technique in multicolours 1723

Jacob Christoph Le Blon: Coloritto 1725

Henry Mill: Patents typing machine 1714

1708 1715 1720 1725 NIcholas Le Sueur: Recueil d'Estampes, technique after Kirkall 1729

JG Häffner: Works of Raymond LLull letterpress in red blue yellow, and purple 1737

William Ged: Invents stereotyping 1739

Louis-Bertand Castel 1740 Optique des Coleurs, twelve-colour harmonic scale derived from Newton

Senter, Ridinger, Haid: Phytanthoza iconographia 1745

Jacques-Fabien Gautier-d'Agoty: Joseph Guichard Duverney, Essai d'anatomie, en tableaux imprimés 1746

Arthur Pond: Technique after Le Sueur 1729

C Knapton: etching tinted with chairoscuro 1729

John Baptist Jackson: Massacre of the Innocents, chiaroscuro AM Zanetti: chiaroscuro woodcut woodcut 1749 1729

1729 1735 1740 1745 1749 Cornelis van Amstel Ploos: River with Town in the Distance 1750

Colour etching and aquatint

John Dolland: invents achromatic lens 1758

Tobias Mayer 1758 
 4nitate Colorum Commentatio, Colour triangle that extrapolates to a double ended pyramid

Jean-Baptiste Gautier d'Agoty: La racine d'angelique 1760

A Scacciati: multicoloured aquatints 1762

C Rugendas: Mezzotints in two-colours FP Charpentier: invents roulette 1750 1762

Jean C François: Corps du Garde, stipple engraving Hugford: Life of AD Gabbani, coloured aquatint 1751 1762

1750 1755 1760 1762 JMB Papillon: Traité Historique et Pratique de la Graveur en Bois 1766

Louis Marin Bonnet: Samson pris par Philistins chez Dalila, crayon style print 1767

JC Ploos van Amstel: colour aquatints 1768

Jean Baptist Le Prince: La Danse Russe, inventor of aquatint 1769

Louis M Bonnet: eight colour stipples, Le pastel en Graveur, inventé et executé 1769

1766 1767 1768 1769 Edouard Gautier d'Agoty: Untitled botanical design fantasy 1770

Ignaz Schiffermüller 1772 Versuch eines Farbensystems, twelve-part division perceptually uniform colour circle

JJ Billaert: Stipple engraver 1772

Johann Heirich Lambert 1772 Beschreibung einer mit dem John Skippe: Leda and the Swan, engraving Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide, 1770 built a physical model of the Lambert system

1770 1771 1772 Moses Harris 1775 The Natural System of Colours, twenty-four part additive and subtractive systems of colour mixtures

Stefano Mulinari: Mezzotints in brown and green 1775

Robert Laurie: Ink colour plate with stump brushes 1776

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William Wynne Ryland: stipple engraving colour à la poupée 1780

Paul Sandby: Views of Windsor Castle, aquatint 1776

1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 Johann Gottlieb Prestel: Raphael's School of Athens, yellowish brown 1785

Charles-Melchior Descourtis: Foire de Village, wash-manner print 1786

Philibert-Louis Debucourt: Le Rosa, aquatint 1786

Diogo de Carvalho e Sampayocao 1788 Disserrtacao Sobre as Cores Primitives, linear colour system

Johann Christoph Frisch 1788 Über eine Harmonische Farben Tonleiter und die Wirkungen und Verhältnisse der Farben im Colorite, linear colour system

Gilles Demarteau: Stipple engraver in black and red 1788

Jean François Janinet: aquatint au manière lavis (wash) 1785

Johann Christoph Frisch 1788 Über eine harmonische Farben-Tonleiter

1785 1786 1787 1788 Thomas Wedgwood and Humpry Davy: Experiments with silver salts 1789

William Blake: Typographic printing, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: The Blossom: Merry Merry Sparrow 1789

Jean François Janinet: Nina, ou, La Folle par Amour, aquatint 1790

Carlo Lasinio: Guido Reni, in Dagoty process 1789

Johannes Teyler: Opus Typochromaticum 1790

Elizabeth Fulhame: Experiments with silver salts 1789

1789 1790 Francesco Bartozolli: Study of Female Heads, stipple engraving 1793

William Blake: Newton, inventor of relief etching 1795

Johann Alois Senefelder: Invents lithography 1796

Firmin Didot: Improves on Ged’s stereotyping 1799

Gilles Antoine Demarteau: St Aloysius, soft ground etching, crayon manner 1799

1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 JW Ritter: observes blackening of silver chloride by ultraviolet 1801

Joseph (Jacquard) Charles: invents punch card driven loom 1801

Thomas Young: Bakerian Lecture: On the Theory of Light and Colours 1802

Thomas Bewick: develops wood engraving 1804

Charles Stanhope: commercialises stereotyping 1805

Jean Lousi Prevost: Bouquet de Tulipe, Pivoines et d'une branche de Pommier, Stipple engraving 1805

Alessandro Volta: invents battery 1800

William Frederick Herschel: discovers infrared part of spectrum 1800

John FW Herschel: discovers infrared 1800

Johann Wilhelm Ritter: discovers ultraviolet 1801

1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 William Hyde Wollaston: invents the camera lucida 1807

Dr Thornton's New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnæus (Temple of Flora), colour mezzotints 1807

Thomas Young 1807 Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts

James Sowerby 1809 A New Elucidation of Colours, Original Prismatic, and Material; Showing Their Concordance in Three Primitives ... And the Means of Producing, Measuring, and Mixing Them: With Some Observations on the Accuracy of Sir Isaac Newton. Hue and lightness scales combined

1807 1808 1809 Gaspard Grégoire: Triaté des couleurs, Atlas of coloured silk samples 1810

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1810 Zur Farbenlehre, hue circle

Otto Runge 1810 Die Farben-Kugel, oder Construction des Verhaeltnisses aller Farben zueinander

John Young: Portraits of the Emperors of Turkey, coloured mezzotint 1816

Matthias Klotz 1816 Gründliche Farbenlehre, hue and lightness scales combined

1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 /).
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Daguerre and Charles Bouton: invent Diorama 1822

William Savage: Practical Hints on Decorative Printing. With Illustrations Engraved on Wood and Printed in Colours at the Type Press. 1822

Charles James Hullmandel & William Day: establish lithography :rm 1823

CJ Hullmandel: The Art of Drawing on Stone 1824

Henry Weishaupt: attempts three-colour lithography 1825

(Josepeh) Nicéphore Niépce: copies an engraving with bitumen as an emulsion 1826

Rudolf Ackermann: Complete Course in Lithography 1819

1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 Charles Hayter 1826 A new practical treatise on the three primitive colours, assumed as a perfect system of rudimental information ... with some -/ "1(" )
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Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre: Daguerreotype 1835

William Henry Fox Talbot: photogenic drawings 1835

Godefroy Engelmann: patented a three-colour lithographic technique 1837 ,0$-'
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1826 1830 1837 Daguerre and Niépce processes made a gift to the world by French Government 1839

Electrotyping Invented 1839

William Henry Fox Talbot: Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by Which Natural Objects May Be Made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist's Pencil. 1839

Charles Knight: Illuminated printing on a polygon frame to print Quarterly Review 1839

Hippolyte Bayard: direct positive photography 1839

MIchel-Eugène Chevreul 1839 De La Loi Du Contraste Simultané Des Couleurs: Et De L'assortiment Des Objets Colorés, Considéré D'après Cette Loi. Hue circle with lightness scale combined

Samuel Morse: demonstrates telegraphy 1838

Thomas Shotter Boys: Hotel de Cluny 1838

Mungo Ponton: observes light sensitivity of paper impregnated with potassium bichromate 1839

Thomas Shotter Boys: Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen etc. Drawn from Nature on Stone 1839

1838 1839 Donne, Berres, Grove, Fizeau: etch Daguerreotypes 1841

John FW Herschel: Sheet of experimental photographs of the spectrum 1841

Henry Shaw: Encyclopedia of Ornament 1842

Herbert Ingram: Illustrated London News 1842

James Vizetelly: prints Ancient Spanish ballads, letters and Ketterlinus Lithographic Manufacturing Company vignettes in red, yellow, blue gray designed by Owen Jones 1842 1840 Owen Jones: Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra, chromolithography 1842

William Henry Fox Talbot: Calotype process 1840

1840 1841 1842 George C Leighton: Art of the Union cover in red, yellow, blue, brown and neutrals 1846

Chiswick Press: Euclid's Six Books of Elements in red, blue, yellow and black, typographic 1847

Claude Félix Abel Niépce de St Victor: creates negatives on glass and heliography 1847


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Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel: coloured dageurretypes 1848 Alexander Bain: Electro-chemical copying telegraph 1843 Alphonse Niépce: creates albumen process 1848

Ferdinand Seré: Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance: chromolithography 1848

William Henry Fox Talbot: The Pencil of Nature 1844

Frederick Scott Archer: Invents collodion emulsion 1848

M&W Hanhart: Lessons in Water Colour Painting, chromolithography, overprinting 1848

1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 Lemercier, Lerebours, Barreswill, and Davanne: Photolithography on grained stone 1852

Bradshaw & Blacklock: licensee of the Baxter process 1853

Hermann Grassman: Theory of Compund Colours 1853

Nisbet & Company: licensee of the Baxter process 1853

C Nègre: photoengraving process 1854

George Baxter: Gems of the Great Exhibition, oil technique in lithography, mezzotint, and woodcut 1854

Paul Pretsch: Photo-galvanographic company 1854

Alphonse Poitevin: invents collotype 1855

Coloured News 1855

Levi Hill: Colour Daguerreotype 1850

GJ Cox: Polytechinic Institute, transfer of copperplates to stones 1850

Heidelberg press company established 1850

Frederick Scott Archer: wet collodion process 1851

1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 Hermannn von Helmholtz 1856 Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik

Paul Pretsch: Photogalvanography halftone on copper 1856

James Clerk Maxwell 1857 J Aresti: Three-colour lithographer 1856 The Diagram of Colours, and On the Theory of Compound Colours, and the Relations of the Owen Jones: Grammar of Ornament Colours of the Spectrum, 1860. Colour triangle 1856 inserted into Newton’s circle

Lemercier & Clay: À Kempis, Imitation of Christ, used 900 stones for colour work 1857

Lewis & Böhm: photogravures overprinted in lithography or R Hill Norris: collodion dry plates woodcut 1856 1857

William Perkin: Discovers Mauvine Fox Talbot: Photoglyphy 1856 1858

1856 1857 1858 Wilhelm Zahn: Die Schönsten Ornamente und Merkwürdigsten Gemälde aus Pompeji, Herkulanum und Stabiae, chromolithography 1859

Thomas Bolton: applies photographic emulsion to wood block 1860

Domesday Book: photozincography facsimile in two colours by Henry James 1860

F Joubert: phototype (collotype) 1860

EJ Asser & Henry James: photozincography Kronheim & Company: licensee of the Baxter process 1859 1860

1859 1860 1861 C Russel: collodion dry plate 1861

Edmund Evans: Art Album, tinted wood engravings 1861

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Hamilton Adams & Company: licensee of the Baxter process 1862

Louis Ducos du Hauron: beam splitting camera 1862

Vincent Brooks: Shakespeare's Songs and Sonnets, tinted lithography 1862

1861 1862 Benjamin Fawcett: County Seats of Great Britiain and Ireland, woodcut 1864

Baron Ransonnet and Henry Collen suggests applying Maxwell's principle to printing 1865

Leighton Brothers: Specimens of Colour printing 1865

Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke 1866 Die Physiologie der Farben für die Zwecke der Kunstgewerbe

Thomas Bewick: invents wood engraving 1867

Lord Kelvin: demonstrates an ink jet device 1867

Charles Cros:colour photography patent from dye imbibition 1869

Josef Albert: improves collotype as Albertype 1869

Louis A Ducos du Hauron: Letter to Academie of Sciences, Paris 1869

Joseph W Swan: carbon process 1864

WB Bolton & BJ Sayce: workable collodion emulsion 1864

Owen Jones; The Grammar of Ornament 1865

Walter B. Woodbury: woodburytype Warne & Company: licensee of the Baxter process 1865 1869

1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 William Benson 1871 Manual of the Science of Colour; On the True Theory of Colour- sensations and the Natural System

Album d'Impression typographiques en Coleur 1872

Thomas Edison: patents electric machine for stock prices 1872

E Remmington & Sons: commercialises typewritter 1873

Francis Orpen Morris: Wood engraving Le Blond & Company: Licensee of the Baxter process 1873 1870

Liverpool Dry Plate Company 1870

Louis Ducos du Hauron: photgraphically separated lithograph 1870

Lemercier & Cie and Édouard Manet: lithograph 1873

Richard Leach Maddox: gelatine dry plates 1871

1870 1871 1872 1873 Wilhelm Wundt: Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie 1874

Wilhelm von Bezold 1874 Die Farbenlehre im Hinblick auf Kunst und Kunstgewerbe. Braunschweig: Verlag von George Westermann. Demonstrates additive and subtractive mixtures.

Hermann Günter Grassmann 1874 Theory of Compound Colours

Ogden Rood 1874 Modern Chromatics; Students’ Text-Book of Color, with Applications to Art and Industry.

Claude Félix Abel Niépce St Victor: heliogravure on steel and %.-
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1874 1875 1876 1877 Ewald Hering 1878 Zur Lehre vom Lichtsinn; and Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, 1905

Otto Radde 1878 Internationale Faareb-Skala. 30-part hues scale with lightness scale

Karl Klietsch: improves photogravure with carbon tranfer 1879

Ogden Rood: Modern Chromatics 1879

Herman Hollerith: develops punch card machine for the tabulation of the US census 1880

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Thomas Nelson & Sons: oil inks on stone and metal HW Vogel: introduces colour-sensitive photographic plates 1880 1878 WY Ottley: Collection of Facsimile Drawings by Old Masters: Wilhelm Wundt: Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie single colour aquatint 1878 1880

1878 1879 1880 
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Calvert B Cottrell & Nathan Babcock patent drum printing press 1883

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Paul Nipkow: Photomechanical television 1884

W Griggs: trichromatic photo-lithography, Guide to Art Illustration 1884

Georges Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte 1884

Frederick E Ives: trichromatic letterpress printing with mechanical halftones 1885

Joseph Williams Lovibond: Tintometer Limited founded 1885

Stephen Horgan: Photomechanical halftone 1881

M Gillot: Gillotage, four-colour etching 1885

Mergenthaler Linotype installed at New York Tribune 1886

Mergenthaler: Liontype machine installed at New York Tribune 1886

George Meisenbach: halftone patent *,,"*-
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1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 Charles Henry 1888 Cercle chromatique

FE Ives: paper to Franklin Institute on three-colour letterpress with halftone 1889

Maxy Levy & Co: begins supply of halftone screens 1889


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Frederick Eugene Ives: Kromskop one shot camera 1891

Boher, Gorter & Company: four-colour collotype 1888

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P Rudoloph: anastigmatic lens Ulrich applies Vogel's sensitisers to print 1889 1891

1888 1889 1890 1891 Angerer & Göschl: chromotype, in four-colours plus pink 1892

Max & Louis Levy: patent for glass halftone screens 1893

E Vogel: collotype in three colours 1892 !##!$
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James William McDonough: screen plate colour photography 1892

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1892 1893 Chicago Colortype Company 1894

John Joly: additive line screen colour photography 1894

Regenstein, Lau Schimdt: Photo Colortype Company 1894

Amstutz Electro Artrograph: transmitts images 1895

Ernest Nister: trichromatic photolithography 1895

FW Lancaster: Microdispersion colour photography 1895

Goupil & Co: Musée du Luxembourg: three-colour gravures 1895

CG Zander: Photo-Trichromatic Printing, in Theory and Practice. Moss Colortype Company 1896 1894

Osgood Colortype Company 1894

Philadelphia Photo Electrotype Company 1894

Waterloo and Sons: four-colour collotype 1894

Photchrom: photolithography with bitumen 1896

Robert Steinhel: La Reproduction des Couleurs par la Superposition des Trois Xouleurs Simples 1896

Tolbert Lanston invents Monotype 1896

1894 1895 1896 Samuel J Hodson: supplied coloured aquatints to the Graphic !2.
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Dobochet et Cie: Four Gospels, woodcuts in red, blue. black 1897

August Albert: Lichtdruck, collotype in four-colours 1898

Wharf-litho: lithography with letterpress 1898

John C Warburg 1899 A three-colour chart

Albertype: Collotype, Chief Stinking Bear 1897 Karl Klietsch: perfects rotary gravure 1899

Penrose & Company: sells Albert emulsion in England 1899

Saturday Evening Post: Prints in two or three colours from 1899 1899

Hermann Ebbinghaus 1897 Grundzüge der Psychologie. Hue saturation and lightness, attempts consolidate Hering and Newton

KF Braun: invents the cathode ray tube 1897

NS Amustutz: Patents Mechanical Engraver The Arc Engraving Company: three-colour work with collodion 1897 1899

1897 1898 1899 Autochrom: colour halftone or photogravure with lithography 1900

Commision Internationale le Photometrie 1900

Edward Bradford Titchener 1900 A demonstrational color pyramid

C Anger & Göschl: Four process 1902

International View Company: F Tennyson Neely Photographs of Phillipines War, printed in three-colours 1902

Eastman Kodak: releases Brownie 1900

Miethe & Traube: discover ethyl red 1902

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Electro-Tint Engraving company: supplied electros Lakeside Press: halftone key overprinted in coloured stipples 1900 1903

Frederick Eugene Ives: Patents Chromoscope Multitone: coloured stipples overprinted in black 1900 1903

Guglielmo Marconi: trans-Atlantic wireless George Newnes: Ideal Magazine, coloured photgravures 1900 1903

1900 1901 1902 1903 American Colortype Company: monopolises colour printing !/($:y 1904

Colorplate Engraving Company: Ainslee, Century, Hampton's, and Scribner's Magazines 1904

E Köning & B Homolka: orthochrome, pinachrome. pinacyanol sensitisers 1904

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Arthur Hübl: Three Colour Photgraphy 1904

Albert Henry Munsell 1905 A Color Notation

CG Zander: four-colour complementary printing process 1905

Colgate FP Advertisement: Saturday Evening Post, four-colour gravure 1905

Ira A Rubel: invents offset lithography 1905

Leon Didier: improves Cros's imbibition process as pinatype 1905

1904 1905 Finlaycolor (Thames Plate): additive colour screen plate 1906

Albert Henry Munsell 1907

Otto Pfenninger: tricolour camera Munsell Color System. 1906 Atlas of the Color-solid

Penrose Annual: trichromatic halftone on cloth 1906

Auguste & Louis Lumière: autochrome screen process 1907

Willian C Huebner: photocomposing 1906

Wratten & Wainright: panchromatic plates 1906

1906 1907 Rembrandt Engraving Company London: photogravure 1909

Geoffrey Mann & Company: Spanish Beauty, halftone offset lithography 1910

JH Christensen: screen plate, becoming Agfa Color Plate 1910

RM Burch: Colour Printing and Colour Printers 1910

Hess-Ives: Ho-Cro colour camera, beam splitter 1911

AA Swinton: electronic pickup tube for image recording Penrose Annual: Kinemacolor 1908 1911

E Belin: phototelegraphy 1908

Louis Dufay: Dufaycolor using a square grid mosaic 1908

Van Dyck Gravure Company New York 1909

1908 1909 1910 1911 Aaron Hambuger: polychromide used at Dover Street Studios, three separation negatives 1913

Commission internationale de l'éclairage 1913

Penrose Annual: Two Useful Aids for the Block Worker 1913

Butler Tri-Colour camera 1914

Kodachrome: two colour subtractive process 1914

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Rudolph Fischer & H Seigrsit: develops dye couplers Van Dyck Gravure of New York 1912 1914

Speed Graphic cameras introduced 1912

1912 1913 1914 /(6 +
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Wilhelm Ostwald 1917 Der Farbenatlas—2500 Farben auf über 100 Tafeln

Autotype Carbo Process 1919

Horan Engraving Company 1919

Pioneer-Moss engraving Company 1919

Erwin Schrödinger 1920 Grundlinien einer Theorie der Farbenmetrik im Tagessehen, non- linear colour model

HG Bartholomew & MD MacFarlane: Bartlane facsimile systems transmits news images 1920

AGFA: dyed varnish screen plate Linhof three-colour dropback for Speed-Graphic camera 1916 1920

Arthur Traube: uvachrome three layers dye positive Pope, Mills, Hamer, Miss: cyanine colour sensitisers 1916 1920

1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 Bell Systems: transmission of pictures over telephone lines 1924

Bell Systems: transmission of separation negatives across telephone wires 1924

Chester Carlson: patents xerography 1924

Aquatone: lithography 1925


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Wirephoto system (facsimile) launched by AT&T 1925  12+ ,
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Rudolf Hell: Hellschreiber (facsimile) Saturday Evening Post: CMYK cover 1923 1926

Trist Tri-Colour camera 1923

CIE1924 adopts visibility curves from NBS 1924

ME Demichel: colour matching equation 1924

RCA: radio photograph 1924

1923 1924 1925 1926 Robert Luther 1927 Aus dem Gebiet der Farbreizmetrik (On color stimulus metrics), tristimulus measuresments aligned to red/green, yellow, blue opponents

Autotype: Three colour image 1928

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Chritine Ladd-Franklin: Colour and Colour Theories 1929

Franz Hillebrand 1929 "%-"
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Munsell Colour Company & OSA: Munsell Book of Color 1929

1927 1928 1929 Fredercik Eugene Ives: Polychrome, two-colour phtography 1930

Hans Podestà 1930 !%.,5#!
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John Webendorfer: First web offset press in US 1930

René Gilbert Tricolour camera 1930

SADAG: Colour photogravure from Tri-Chrome camera 1930

CIE XYZ colour space 1931

Tri-Chrome Photos and Film Limited Camera 1930

1930 1931 Deane Brewster Judd 1932 Chromaticity Sensibilities to Stimulus Differences, and a Maxwell Triangle Yielding Uniform Chromaticity Scales. 1935. CIE chart demonstrates opponency

Technicolor: Full length motion pictures imbibition process, three colours, Disney adopts for animation 1932

IBM buys Electromatic Typewriter Company 1933

Marcel Duchamp: The Green Box: La Mariée Mise À Nu Par Ses Célibataires, Même, collotype 1934

Western Electric: Photoelectric exposure meter 1932

Gasparcolor 1933

1932 1933 1934 AC Hardy: Handbook of Colorimetry 1935

Bermpohl Naturfarbenkamera: one-shot camera 1935

CIE1931 model applied to sigalling by 1935 1935 Agfacolour: Neu Tripak 1936 David L MacAdam 1935 ,-&'
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Heidleberg: cylinder letterpress 1935

Kodachrome 16mm Motion Film goes on market 1935

Leopold Mannes & Leopold Godowsky: subtractive three-colour emulsion with colour couplers 1935 Saturday Evening Post: Cover produced by Ivan Dmitir in Kodachrome 1936

National Photocolor Corporation: one-shot camera 1935

1935 1936 AC Hardy and FL Wurzburg: The Theory of Three-Colour Reproduction 1937

Hans EJ Neugebauer: Die Theoretischen Grundlagen De Mehrfarben-Edruckes 1937

William C Huebner: makes largest enlargement of 35mm Kodachrome into lithography 1937

Chester F Carlson; invents xeroxography 1938

David L MacAdam: Photographic Aspects of the Theory of Three- Color Reproduction 1938

Defender: chromatone and chroma relief imbibition colour processes 1938

Devin: One-shot tricolour camera 1938

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Penrose Annual: Hassing Engraver 1938

Agfacolor: postive negative process 1939

Leica Book of Colour published Defender: Tri-Pac 1938 1940

1937 1938 1939 1940 Dorothy Nickerson & OSA: Munsell Color Renotation 1943

Hardy and Wurzburg scanner 1947

Eastman Kodak release Ektachrome 1943 British Standard Inks established 1950 John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert: ENIAC 1946

Time-Springdale (Murray Morse) scanner 1946

Chemco: separation camera 1950

IBM 407: tabulating machine printer 1950

JT Morgan: Litho-Krome Company 1950

1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 Sven Hesselgren 1953 Hesselgrens Färgatlas, hue circle and atlas based on Hering principles

Belin scanner 1954

Newspaper Enterprise Association Imagescanner 1954

Rudolf Hell: Vario-Klischograph Hunter-Penrose Autoscan imagescanner 1954 1955

1953 1954 1955 +),3eld Electronics: Scanatron CRT scanner 1957

Leo M Hurvich and Dorothea Jameson 1957 An Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision

RWG Hunt: Reproduction of Color 1957

Rudolf Hell: Colorgraph imagescanner 1957

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Russell A Kirsch: scans image of his son into a computer 1957

Fairchild: Scan-a-Color & Scan-a-Sizer 1958

Xerox: plain paper copier 1959

1957 1958 1959 Johannes Itten 1961 The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color

Marshall McLuhan: The Gutenberg Galaxy; the Making of Typographic Man 1962

David H Hubel and Torsten N Wiesel: Single Cell Responses in Striate Cortex of Kittens Deprived of Vision in One Eye 1963

Josef Albers 1963 Interaction of Color

Russell L De Valois: Studies color vision mechanisms in monkeys 869?eld: Diascan cheaper drum scanner 1960 1965

CIE 1964 (U*, V*, W*) color space Linotype-Paul: Linoscan 1960 1965

Log-Etronic color separator IBM: magnetic disc storage Rudolf Hell: Chromgraph 1960 1962 1965

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay: Basic Color Terms 1969

Boyle, Willard and Smith: Charged Coupler Device 1969

203;eld: Magnascan 450 with halftone and scaling 1969

William M Ivins: Prints and Visual Communication 1969

Hazeltine Corporation: Prepress video display 1970

WD Wright: The Rays Are Not Coloured: Essays on the Science and Vision and Colour 1970

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Nathaniel I Korman: The Digital Computer-Controlled Scanner for Colour Separation. 1972

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Rudolf Hell: Combi-Chromgraph with masking 1967

ANLAB40 colour space 1968

Bell Labs: CCD video camera 1970

Xerox: color copier Dianippon: Direct Scanagraph 1967 1970

1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 Steve Sasson: Kodak CCD camera 1975

Fairchild: First commercial CCD camera 1976

Canon & Hewlett Packard: Inkjet technology 1977

PDI: laser scanner with electronic halftone 1977

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OSA Uniform Colour Scales Scitex: elctronic imaging and page make up 1977 1979

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 British Standard Inks established 1981

IT8 target established 1981

IBM 5150 Personal Computer introduced 1981

Adobe: introduces PostScript printer description language 1982 '%(.eld: Studio 800 page makeup 1980

Dianippon Screen: Sigmagraph 2000 page make up 1980 David Marr: Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Rudolf Hell: Chromacron, page make up system Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information 1980 1982

Rudolf Hell: Chromograph DC 300  !%$ ,
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/at bed CCD 1980 1982

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1980 1981 1982 Adobe PostScript Level 1 1984

Apple Macintosh introduced 1984

Hewlett-Packard: LaserJet 1984 300dpi Apple LaserWriter with built-in PostScript interpreter 1985

Eikonix: Digital camera 1985 Hewlett-Packard: ThinkJet @ $495 1984

James Cameron: The Terminator 1984

Siemens: Duplex colour and mono continuous form printer 1984

id Software: DOOM 1984 Windows 1.0 introduced 1985

1984 1985 Joint Photographic Experts Group: image compression standard JPG 1988

Apple Inc: ColorSync color management software bundled with system 1993

AppleColor RGB display 1986 International Color Consortium esatblished 1993

Durst: Lambda 130 laser printer 1994

Epson: MJ-700V2C full colour inkjet printer 1994

Apple: Color LaserWriter 600dpi Eastman Kodak: Ektaprint 1392 colour printer 1995 1986

Hitachi: dye diffusion thermal transfer printer 1986

Hewlett-Packard: DeskJet inkjet 1987

Hewlett-Packard: PaintJet CMYK printer 1987

PhotoMac: image manipulation program Kodak: Dye sublimation printers 1988 1995

Letraset: Color Studio 1.0 QMS: Color LaserWriter 600dpi 1989 1995

Adobe PostScript Level 2 Adobe PostScript Level 3 1991 1997

Adobe: PhotoShop 1.0 Fuji: Thermo autochrome CMY JPG2000: ISO 15444 1990 1994 1999

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 ISO adopts PDF/X (PDF 1.3) for digital exchange 2002

Lumiere Technology Paris: Multispectral imaging 2008

Wacom: Wireless Tablet ./)*
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3les for bankruptcy 2005 2012

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012