Red. 13.50 15.20 16.85 14.06 13.46
Yellow. 13.90 15.46 18.00 16.40 15.85
Green. 15.66 18.00 19.86 18.32 18.00
Blue. 13.00 14.15 16.85 15.50 14.09
Average for all
the colors. 14.00 15.70 17.90 15.90 15.35
The measurements were made in the same way as before, and are given in
sixteenths of an inch.
In the diagram the abscissas represent the different intensities, the
ordinates the amount of the curvature. To avoid confusion, the curve of
the average of all the colors is left out of this diagram.
[Illustration]
It will be noticed in these records that the different colors give very
different measurements of curvature. Green gives by far the largest,
being greater than any of the others at every point. Since the process
of obtaining the curvature was the same with all the colors, these
differences in curvature can only be due to inherent differences in
the processes which give the sensations of the different colors.
It cannot be due simply to one sort of intensity process, the same
for all the colors, otherwise the curvature of all the colors would
be the same. At the same time the curvature of the image is due to
differences in intensity of excitation between one part of the image
and another. There must be, therefore, a retinal excitation in some
respects different for each color, capable of its different degrees
of intensity. Of course these individual differences would have a
decidedly limited range, for, as every one knows, if the intensity of
a color be increased sufficiently its saturation vanishes and white
appears in its place, while if the intensity be decreased without
limit, black appears. It may be that different degrees of excitation in
the different processes have different rates of time in coming into
consciousness, so that an equal degree of difference in excitation
between the ends and centre of the green image and the ends and centre
of the red image would give decidedly different amounts of curvature,
if it took a longer time after the centre of the green image had
appeared in consciousness for the ends to appear than it did in the
case of the red.
The time-differences might be greater with the same differences in
intensities of excitation with one color and another. Or it may be
that the excitation spreads in a different manner with each one of the
colors, and therefore gives differing degrees of reënforcement with the
different colors, and thus produces different amounts of curvature.
It is noticeable also that the amounts of curvature are related to one
another in a peculiar way. Green has the greatest amount of curvature,
yellow the next. Red is greater than blue with the higher intensities,
they are equal at the maximum, and blue is greater than red when the
lower intensities are used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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