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Color science and color photography

JAN 01, 1967

For high‐fidelity reproduction of color, films and television would use principles defined by Maxwell and elaborated by Ives. Color scientists are coming back to old ideas that have been neglected for many years.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3034137

David L. MacAdam

COLOR SCIENCE IS based on important contributions of many well known figures: Isaac Newton, Thomas Young, Hermann Helmholtz, Hermann Grassman, James Clerk Maxwell and Erwin Schrödinger to mention only the most prominent. Seemingly as an aside, incidental to one of his lucid lectures, Maxwell invented three‐color photography. He explained the principle on which all modern color photography, color printing and color television are based. Despite years of development, however, those who practice those arts still have much to learn from Maxwell and Frederic Ives, who first practiced, interpreted and championed Maxwell’s idea, and from the science of color that grew out of the work of Maxwell, Ives and Ives’s son Herbert.

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More about the authors

David L. MacAdam, Kodak research laboratory.

© 1967 American Institute of Physics

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This Content Appeared In

Volume 20, Number 1

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