Abstract
IT is half a century since Maxwell1 investigated the chromatic relations of the spectral colours and exhibited the results on Newton's diagram. The curve “forms two sides of a triangle with doubtful fragments of the third side. Now, if three colours in Newton's diagram lie in a straight line, the middle one is a compound of the two others. Hence all the colours of the spectrum may be compounded of those which lie at the angles of this triangle. These correspond to the following—scarlet, wave-length (in Fraunhofer's measure), 2328; green, wave-length, 1914; blue, wave-length, 1717. All the other colours of the spectrum may be produced by combinations of these; and since all natural colours are compounded of the colours of the spectrum, they may be compounded of these three primary colours. I [Maxwell] have strong reason to believe that these are the three primary colours corresponding to three modes of sensation in the organ of vision, on which the whole system of colour, as seen by the normal eye, depends.”
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References
Phil. Trans., 1860.
Helmboltz, "Phys. Optik", 2nd edition, p 340.
NATURE, vol. xxv., p. 64, 1881: Sci. Papers, i., p. 544.
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RAYLEIGH On Colour Vision at the Ends of the Spectrum . Nature 84, 204–205 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/084204c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/084204c0