Colour vision : $b Being the Tyndall Lectures delivered in 1894 at the Royal InstitutionAbney, William de Wiveleslie, Sir
Science
Colour vision : $b Being the Tyndall Lectures delivered in 1894 at the Royal Institution
Abney, William de Wiveleslie, Sir
Color vision
the proportions of fundamental light and colour remained the same
throughout. Other examples and considerations seem to indicate that
the proportion of colour to fundamental light is greatest in the red
sensation, next in the green, and least in the blue. This would explain
why with increasing intensities blue appears white sooner than green,
and much sooner than red. The proposed modification would also offer
the necessary explanation as to the disappearance of colour from the
field.
Looking at colour vision from what I may call an evolutionary point
of view, the “light-colour” theory commends itself as probable. There
are many reasons for thinking that the visual sensation first evolved
was that of light, subsequently followed by that of colour. The first
evolved colour sensation would appear to have been the blue, and
the last the red. The discussion of this hypothesis would carry me
beyond my limits, and I must leave it thus baldly expressed for your
consideration.
For my own part, whatever theory of colour sensations may prove to
be the right one, I lean strongly to the idea that the cause of
vision will be found in chemical action, induced by the impact of
the different wave-lengths of light falling on sensitive matter. A
white substance may absorb all the wave-lengths found in the spectrum,
and if it have three sets of molecules, one of which has an atom or
atoms vibrating with the same period as the waves of light which show
a maximum for one sensation and another for another, and so on, the
requirements for the colour sensations are met. It may be that the
sensitive part of the retina is like a photographic plate, but with
this essential difference--that the sensitive material is constantly
changing. A photographic plate receives an impression which is not
recognisable by the eye, though it can be shown that a change in the
material does take place during the impact of light, by electrical and
other means. When the eye receives an impression of light, Dewar has
shown that in this case also a current of electricity is generated.
Recent published experiments of my own have demonstrated that with
a low intensity of light, the chemical change that occurs in a
photographic salt is by no means proportionate to that which takes
place with a greater intensity. In the eye, too, there is a limit of
sensibility to very feeble light. Again, the curves of the stimulation
of the colour sensations to the spectrum are closely of the same form
as the curves of sensitiveness of the various sensitive salts used by
photographers. These are analogies and, of course, must not be pressed
too far. There must be such a complexity in the sensitive material
in the eye, both chemical and physiological, that it may be that the
changes induced by light on the sensitive surface of the retina have
to be considered from both aspects. The purely chemical change is
naturally that to which a physicist is most prone to incline, and his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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