History of Colors

Isaac Newton made a study of color starting at the age of 23 in 1666 and developed the useful Newton color circle which gives insight about complementary colors and additive color mixing. He realized that some colors (magenta, purple) could not be produced as spectral colors. One of his contributions was the idea that white light is light containing all wavelengths of the visible spectrum. He demonstrated this fact with experiments on the dispersion of light in glass prisms.
Thomas Young suggested the threefold character of color perception in 1802 and speculated that there were three different types of color sensitive receptors in the eye.
In the 1860s, James Clerk Maxwell explored the use of three primary colors and realized that no additive combination of three primary colors can cover the entire gamut of perceivable hues. He showed that the set of primaries was not unique, but that spectral primaries more widely separated in wavelength could be used to produce a wider range of perceived hues. He also realized that with some subtraction, the entire gamut of perceived colors could be covered. Maxwell recognized that the chromaticism (hue and saturation) of a colored surface is relatively insensitive to the brightness. Maxwell's work could be considered to be the basis for modern calorimetry.