scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1006232
Three famous people: Hermann von Helmholtz in 1852, Graßmann in 1852-1853, Helmholtz again in 1855, and Maxwell the same year, Helmholtz again in 1858. This shows a steady progress from Newton's seven single colours for a weighted or barycentric mixing for the colour resulting from several colours, to the continuous spectrum and the imposition of mathematical quantitative methods in 1858. Helmholtz started with two basic colours for mixing of light and five for the mixing of pigments, with different rules of additive, resp. subtractive colour mixes for the two cases. Newton had barycentric mixing with seven primary colours, and only one pair of complementary light colours (yellow and indigo blue) mixing to give pure white. Craftsmen and dyers used a colour triangle, with three primary colours of red, yellow and blue (where the mixing of yellow and blue pigments gave green). Graßmann in 1852 speculated that there should be at least two pairs of complementary colours, adding a speculative red/green pair to Helmholtz's yellow/blue for mixing light. But by 1853 he had a developed theory, an application of the Ausdehnungslehre: infinitely many pairs of complementary colours, a continuous spectrum of colours around the Newtonian circle, the characteristics of brightness (intensity), hue (colour), and saturation (the amount of admixed white). Calculations from the circle were barycentric. By 1855 Helmholtz had adopted Graßmann's basic ideas, but developed a form of spectral locus (curve) -- not a circle since the colours were not equally saturated. Maxwell had read Graßmann in an 1854 translation, and placed Helmholtz's spectral locus inside a Thomas-Young triangle of primaries; this was adopted by Helmholtz in 1858. The article is clear, lively and interesting, to the point with Graßmann. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0853.00027].
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