[sci.misc] Primary colors in human color vision

arromdee@cs.jhu.edu (Kenneth Arromdee) (04/14/91)

In article <15410001@hp-and.HP.COM> panek@hp-and.HP.COM (Jon Panek) writes:
>... a more accurate nomenclature for the subtractive primaries are
>magenta, cyan and yellow.
>...
>Folklore has it that the aforementioned Dr. Land would call up the
>CEO of Crayola on an annual basis, slightly before Christmas.  He
>demanded that Crayola include in its crayon sets three crayons which
>were accurate primaries.  He claimed that children in elementary
>schools were being misled when told that "mixing red and yellow
>gives you orange", or "mixing blue and yellow give you green".  Each
>year the CEO replied that no, the subtractive primaries hadn't been
>included.

This is silly.  As a kid I had Crayola crayons that most definitely _did_
include at least magenta, and after learning about subtractive primaries I
tested it myself by combining magenta and yellow, and sure enough it _did_
give red.

Yellow and purple also gave a nice brown.

[Note the followup-to line.]
--
"If God can do anything, can he float a loan even he can't repay?"
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Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
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