Editing Primary color (section)

=== Light and color vision ===

[[Isaac Newton]] used the term "primary color" to describe the colored spectral components of sunlight.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33504/33504-h/33504-h.htm|title=Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light|last=Newton|first=Isaac|date=1730|publisher=William Innys at the West-End of St. Paul's.|language=en|page=135 |quote="Whiteness and all grey Colours between white and black, may be compounded of Colours, and the whiteness of the Sun's Light is compounded of all the primary Colours mix'd in a due Proportion"}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Newton |first1=Isaac |title=A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton … containing his New Theory about Light and Color |journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society |date=19 February 1671 |issue=80 |pages=3075–3087 |url=http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00006 |access-date=19 November 2020 |quote=The Original or primary colours are, Red, Yellow, Green, Blew, and a Violet-purple, together with Orange, Indico, and an indefinite variety of Intermediate gradations. |archive-date=15 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220215225401/https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00006 |url-status=dead }}</ref> A number of color theorists did not agree with Newton's work. [[David Brewster]] advocated that red, yellow, and blue light could be combined into any spectral hue late into the 1840s.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Boker |first1=Steven M. |title=The Representation of Color Metrics and Mappings in Perceptual Color Space |url=http://people.virginia.edu/~smb3u/ColorVision2/node6.html |website=The Representation of Color Metrics and Mappings in Perceptual Color Space}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=MacEvoy |first1=Bruce |title=handprint : colormaking attributes |url=https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color6.html |website=www.handprint.com |quote=The Scottish physicist David Brewster (1781-1868) was an especially pugnacious holdout, arguing as late as the 1840's that all spectral hues could be explained by red, yellow, and blue fundamental colors of light, which Brewster equated with three colored filters or transmittance curves that could reproduce the entire spectrum...}}</ref> [[Thomas Young (scientist)|Thomas Young]] proposed red, green, and violet as the three primary colors, while [[James Clerk Maxwell]] favored changing violet to blue.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maxwell |first1=James Clerk |title=The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell |publisher=Courier Corporation |year=2013|isbn=978-0-486-78322-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EA7CAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA449 |language=en |page=49 |quote=The experiments with pigments do not indicate what colours are to be considered as primary; but experiments on the prismatic spectrum shew that all the colours of the spectrum, and therefore all the colours in nature, are equivalent to mixtures of three colours of the spectrum itself, namely, red, green (near the line E), and blue (near the line G). Yellow was found to be a mixture of red and green.}}</ref> [[Hermann von Helmholtz]] proposed "a slightly purplish red, a vegetation-green, slightly yellowish, and an ultramarine-blue" as a trio.<ref>{{cite book
| title     = A text book of the principles of physics
| author    = Alfred Daniell
| publisher = Macmillan and Co
| year      = 1904
| page      = 575
| url       = https://books.google.com/books?id=oPQZAAAAYAAJ&q=primary+red-green-and-violet+maxwell&pg=PA575
}}</ref> Newton, Young, Maxwell, and Helmholtz were all prominent contributors to "modern color science"<ref name="Mollon2003">{{cite book |last1=Mollon |first1=J.D. |title=The science of color |date=2003 |publisher=Elsevier |location=Amsterdam |isbn=0-444-51251-9 |pages=1–39 |citeseerx=10.1.1.583.1688 |edition=2nd }}</ref>{{rp|1–39}} that ultimately described the perception of color in terms of the three types of retinal photoreceptors.