300+ Years of Color Theory: The "IVES COLOR WHEEL"

This short patent application is included in a reading list on the history of Color Theory. Find the homepage for the series here.

There is a lot of mystery and dissent swirling around what is called the "Ives Color Wheel." I believe the source lies in Ives search for a better three pigment primary paint palette. 

Better known for his pioneering research in television, Herbert Eugene Ives was the son of the photographic pioneer Frederic Ives. What isn't as well known about Herbert is that he loved to paint and created over 200 portraits in his lifetime. A biographical memoir for Herbert mentions his love of painting and his painstaking search for the perfect paint pigments for his palette.

Ives understood the properties of light, specifically the subtractive nature of light on a colored surface (like a painted canvas). When light reaches a painting of a red, ripe apple, some light waves are absorbed by the red paint, and some are reflected. We perceive the reflected light waves as a colored surface.

With this principle of the subtractive nature of pigments in mind, Herbert Ives used the latest spectro-photometric technology in his day (the early 1930s) to measure light reflected from pigments. Ives understood the trichromatic theory of human vision as described by Thomas Young, that all colors may be reproduced by mixing red light, green light, and blue-violet light. Ives believed that there must be three pigments that would absorb the same wavelengths of red, green, and blue light as discovered in human vision. These paint pigments, in Ives' mind, should create the perfect three pigment primary paint palette.

What's fascinating is that when Ives first pointed his photoelectric recording spectro-photometer at available pigments, there weren't any that came close to his "ideal" pigments. It would take several years of research to find three pigments closer to Ives' idea, which he called Xanth (a bright, clear yellow), Aklor (magenta), and Cyan (a bright, clear cyan blue).

Herbert E. Ives applied for a US Patent on August 30, 1938, with a description of his three pigment primary system titled, COLOR CHART AND METHOD OF MAKING THE SAME.

Although the patent is very clearly written, there is some debate about what exactly this color system represents and how it continues to be represented in modern publications and tools. As a guide, let's look specifically at how Ives writes about his color system and discuss what it all means.

In the opening sentence of the patent application, Ives states his intent with this color chart:

    "This invention relates to a color chart and to a method of making the same, and aims to provide a convenient and easily made color chart to serve as a guide in the use of a three-color palette."

He is stating that this color chart is made with a three pigment primary paint system as a guide to using three paint colors to mix other colors.

The second sentence describes how he chose the primary pigments, the three basic colors in his chart that mix together to form all the others.

    "To apply the principle that all colors of the spectrum may be produced by mixtures of red, green and blue light to the mixing of three colored pigments, it is necessary to select three pigments which absorb respectively narrow spectral bands of blue, green, and red light."

He is explaining how he applies the trichromatic theory of human color vision (that three colors of light, red, green, and blue, mix in perception to create the sensation of all other colors) to the selection of three primary paint colors. In his system, these three primary paint colors must be as close to the opposites of the red, green, and blue light as possible.

So, in this document, Herbert E. Ives is solidifying the ideas he had been talking about and researching for years regarding the subtractive nature of pigments and the specific spectral absorption of certain pigments. He doesn't name which pigments are his perfect three, but they would look like what we call cyan, yellow, and magenta today. Some people mistakenly credit Herbert E. Ives as the inventor of cyan, magenta, and yellow colors as partitive or printing primaries. He didn't invent the three or four-color printing process, or the yellow, magenta, red, and cyan blue pigments that were in use. What he DID do is refine pigments through years of research to come up with a better cyan, magenta, and yellow set of pigments that could be used as paints or in printing. There is also confusion over the Ives name and the invention of the halftone printing process; Herbert's father, Frederic Ives, refined methods that already existed for halftone printing, patenting his special process in 1881.

The bulk of Herb's patent application describes in detail the arrangement of the colors in the system in a large, hexagonal shape. The three primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) are placed in three evenly spaced outer points of the hexagonal chart. The colors in the system that are mixed from two of the primary colors (red, green, and blue) live in the remaining evenly spaced outer points of the hexagonal chart. Between each of these points, the primary and secondary colors are shown as mixing in even amounts.

Herb names all of these colors in the outer layer of the hexagonal chart "pure colors" because they are all representative of mixes between the first three primary colors and secondary pigment colors. Various versions of this basic hexagonal chart show differing results when the pigments in the system mix in different ways. In all of these differing charts, Herb always refers to the fully saturated versions of these colors as "pure colors."

The terminology Herb chose in "pure colors" within his system has caused some confusion, as this word can mean different things in different color systems. And some argue that there isn't really such a thing as a pure color in real life (outside of the laboratory) because we are never exposed to a single wavelength of light, or anything that reflects just one type of lightwave.

What's important to remember is what Herb's system represents: a simple three pigment primary system with a specific magenta red, yellow, and cyan blue as the primary paint colors.

Does Herb's three pigment primary system represent the lightwave? While Herb did use a special light meter to refine the pigments in his system based on spectral absorption, his system does not represent "the lightwave".

Lightwaves can be studied with Newton's Visual Spectrum, which displays the wavelengths of visible light in order from the longest measurable wavelength (red light) to the shortest measurable wavelength (blue light).

Human color vision can be studied with the trichromatic theory of color vision, with the red, green, and blue additive light system, or the cone opponent process (aka the visual contrast system or psychological colors), with red/green and yellow/blue perceptual pairs.

If you'd like to learn more about color processes or how we perceive colors, visit the Colour Literacy project website here.

My final thoughts on the Ives color wheel are directed towards how the mythology grew from the facts, and why we're not recognizing the system for what it is: a representation of a simple three pigment primary artist's palette of cyan, magenta, and yellow paint.