Feature
OSA Instrumental in Development of the Uniform Color Scales
A perceptually uniform color space was important to both industry and the arts. Among other advantages, industrial color tolerances could be established more easily in a uniform color space. Studies leading to improvement of the uniformity of the Munsell color system had been completed a few years earlier. Judd, Blanche Bellamy, Sidney M. Newhall, Dorothy Nickerson, Carl Foss and Walter Granville, with others, had published supporting papers in the Journal of the Optical Society of America in 1943. These individuals knew that although the renotation had improved spacing, the Munsell color system is based on radiating polar coordinates and can never be completely uniform. Furthermore, all color systems at that time included additional concepts that could not coexist with uniformity. Sometimes complementary colors, either additive or subtractive, must fall opposite one another, or a trio of primary colors must be evenly placed around the color wheel.
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