The colour composition of any object may be measured by superimposing units of different colours until the colour of the object is matched. A convenient apparatus is furnished for this purpose. The composition of the colour is learned by merely reading the markings on the glasses.
It is of course necessary that in the isolation of colour rays, some unit for measuring the intensity of both light and colour be established. As will be explained later, all such units are necessarily arbitrary. In this method the unit has been established by taking the smallest amount of colour easily perceptible to the ordinary vision. This unit or “one” is divided into tenths in the darker shades, and hundredths in the lighter scale. One one-hundredth is the smallest amount of colour measurable by a normal trained vision.
When equivalent units in the three colours are superimposed, their equivalent value (not their aggregate value) represents so much white light absorbed. For instance, 2 R. + 2 Y. + 2 B. absorbs two units of white light.
When the absorptive power of the colour standards is less than the intensity of the light, associated white light remains.
It may at first appear strange that colour, one of the most important indices of value in the Arts, Manufactures, and Natural Products, should have no common nomenclature or reliable standard for reference, the reproduction of a given colour depending for exactitude on the memory of a sensation; whereas this branch of science requires a physical means of recording a colour, with a power of recovery. It remains to be shown that this power of record and recovery is possible, and depends only on the observance of a few simple natural laws easy of application.
The study of colour is carried on by two principal methods: the spectroscopic, where the colours are partially separated as a continuous band by a regular variation in their indices of refraction, the colours gradually merging into each other by overlapping in opposite directions; or by absorption, where a colour is developed by absorbing its complementary, and is isolated as a single or complex colour. This latter is nature’s own method.
It is necessary to touch on some theoretical differences which exist between Scientists and Artists, as to which are Primary colours, as confusion of this character retards investigation. Scientists adopt Red, Green, and Violet as Primaries, regarding all other colours as mixtures of these; whilst Artists and Colourists adopt Red, Yellow and Blue as the Primaries, and all other colours as made from them.