Light Touch
Is Brown a Color?
Despite being the color of the earth, it’s taken brown centuries to secure public appreciation.
USDA scientists inspect roots planted in soil in Big Flats, New York, USA. [USDA]
Ernst von Brücke was a physician, physiologist and noted optical physicist. Yet even he, a co-founder of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft and an influence on both Hermann von Helmholtz and Sigmund Freud, could not account for the position of brown relative to known colors. “Brown is wanting in the prismatic spectrum, and its relation to the colors of the spectrum is as yet unknown,” he wrote in 1848. His remark captures the confusion surrounding the color less than two centuries ago.
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