Abstract
ALTHOUGH Thomas Young is well known as the founder of a theory of colour vision, his contributions to the theory are limited to two or three short paragraphs, and there is no evidence that he himself attached much importance to them. He was the first who, starting from the well-known fact that there are three primary colours, sought for the explanation of this fact, not in the nature of light, but in the constitution of man. He wrote: ÂœNow, as it is almost impossible to conceive each sensitive point of the retina to contain an infinite number of particles each capable of vibrating in perfect unison with every possible undulation, it becomes necessary to suppose the number limited, for instance, to the three primary colours red, yellow, and blue . . . and each sensitive filament of the nerve may consist of three portions, one for each principal colour. He afterwards took red, green, and violet as the three primary colours. His other statement regarding colour is in connexion with Daltons colour-blindness, of which he says: ÂœIt is much more simple to suppose the absence or paralysis of those fibres of the retina which are calculated to perceive redÂ.
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Young's Theory of Colour Vision.*. Nature 128, 123 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128123a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128123a0