Fig. 36.--(After König.) The color triangle, a map of the laws of color mixture. The spectral colors are arranged in order along the heavy solid line, and the purples along the heavy dotted line. The numbers give the wave-lengths of different parts of the spectrum. Inside the heavy line are located the pale tints of each color, merging from every side into white, which is located at the point W.
Suppose equal amounts of two spectral colors are mixed: to find from the diagram the color of the mixture. Locate the two colors on the heavy line, draw a straight line between these two points, and the middle of this line gives the color-tone and saturation of the mixture. For example, mix red and yellow: then the resulting color is a saturated reddish yellow. Mix red (760) and green (505): the resulting yellow is non-saturated, since the straight line between these two points lies inside the figure. If the straight line joining two points passes through W, the colors located at the two points are complementary.
Spectral colors are themselves not completely saturated. The way to get color sensations of maximum saturation is first to stare at one color, so as to fatigue or adapt the eye for that color, and then to turn the eye upon the complementary color, which, under these conditions, appears fuller and richer than anything otherwise obtainable. The corners, R, G, and B, denote colors of maximum saturation, and the whole of the triangle outside of the heavy line is reserved for super-saturated color sensations.
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Physics tells us of the stimulus, but we are concerned with the response. The facts of color-blindness and color mixing show very clearly that the response does not tally in all respects with the stimulus. Physics, then, is apt to confuse the student at this point and lead him astray. Much impressed with the physical discovery that white light is a mixture of all wave-lengths, he is ready to believe the sensation of white a mixed sensation. He says, "White is the sum of all the colors", meaning that the sensation of white is compounded of the sensations of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet--which is simply not true. No one can pretend to get the sensations of red or blue in the sensation of white, and the fact of complementary colors shows that you cannot tell, from the sensation of white, whether the stimulus consists of yellow and blue, or red and bluish green, or red, green and blue, or all the wave-lengths, the response being the same to all these various combinations. Total color-blindness showed us, when we were discussing this matter before, that white was an elementary sensation, and nothing that has been said since changes that conclusion.
Consider black, too. Physics says, black is the absence of light; but this must not be twisted to mean that black is the absence of all visual sensation. Absence of visual sensation is simply nothing, and black is far from that. It is a sensation, as positive as any, and undoubtedly elementary.
From the point of view of physics, there is no reason for considering any one color more elementary than any other. Every wave-length is elementary; and if sensation tallied precisely with the stimulus, every spectral color-tone would be an element. But there are obvious objections to such a view, such as: (1) there are not nearly as many [{219}] distinguishable color-tones as there are wave-lengths; (2) orange, having a single wave-length, certainly appears to be a blend as truly as purple, which has no single wave-length; and (3) we cannot get away from the fact of red-green blindness, in which there are only two color-tones, yellow and blue. In this form of color vision (which, we must remember, is normal in the intermediate zone of the retina), there are certainly not as many elementary responses as there are wave-lengths, but only one response to all the longer waves (the sensation of yellow), one response to all the shorter waves (the sensation of blue), one response to the combination of long and short waves (the sensation of white), and one response to the cessation of light (the sensation of black). These four are certainly elementary sensations, and there are probably only a few more.
There must be at least two more, because of the fact that two of the sure elements, yellow and blue, are complementary. For suppose we try to get along with one more, as red. Then red, blended with yellow, would give the intervening color-tones, namely, orange with reddish and yellowish orange; and red blended with blue would give violet and purple; but yellow and blue would only give white or gray, and there would be no way of getting green. We must admit green as another element. The particular red selected would be that of the red end of the spectrum, if we follow the general vote; and the green would probably be something very near grass green. We thus arrive at the conclusion that there are six elementary visual responses or sensations: white and black, yellow and blue, red and green.
It is a curious fact that some of these elementary sensations blend with each other, while some refuse to blend. White and black blend to gray, and either white or black or both together will blend with any of the four elementary colors or with any possible blend of these four. Brown, for [{220}] example, is a grayish orange, that is, a blend of white, black, red and yellow. Red blends with yellow, yellow with green, green with blue, and blue with red. But we cannot get yellow and blue to blend, nor red and green. When we try to get yellow and blue to blend, by combining their appropriate stimuli, both colors disappear, and we get simply the colorless sensation of white or gray. When we try to get red and green to blend, both of them disappear and we get the sensation of yellow.