Albert Henry Munsell Popular Books

Albert Henry Munsell Biography & Facts

Albert Henry Munsell (January 6, 1858 – June 28, 1918) was an American painter, teacher of art, and the inventor of the Munsell color system. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, attended and served on the faculty of Massachusetts Normal Art School, and died in nearby Brookline. As a painter, he was noted for seascapes and portraits. Munsell is famous for inventing the Munsell color system, an early attempt at creating an accurate system for numerically describing colors. He wrote three books about it: A Color Notation (1905), Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915) and one published posthumously, A Grammar of Color: Arrangements of Strathmore Papers in a Variety of Printed Color Combinations According to The Munsell Color System (1921). The Munsell color order system has gained international acceptance and has served as the foundation for many color order systems, including CIELAB. In 1917, he founded the Munsell Color Company. Biography Albert Henry Munsell is best known for his contributions in Color Science and his Color Theory, which led to one of the first Color Order Systems, the Munsell color system. He was born on January 6, 1858, in Boston. He went on to graduate from the Massachusetts Normal Art School, which is now known as the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was later hired by the Normal Art School as an instructor, where he lectured about Color Composition and Artistic Anatomy. In 1905, Munsell published his book, A Color Notation which described his new Color Theory. Later, he published his book Atlas of the Color Solid which preceded the Munsell Book of Color. The Munsell Book of Color described his color order system and was the first to include actual samples of the colors in the system. Munsell spent most of his later life traveling around Europe to present his work to painters and scientists. Munsell's work created an important bridge between art and science. Munsell established the Munsell Color Company in 1917. He died shortly after on June 28, 1918. Munsell color theory During his study of color, Munsell realized the need for an organized way of defining colors. He wanted to create a system that had a meaningful notation of color, rather than just color names that he found were "foolish" and "misleading". He set out to create his color space in 1898. To do this, he used his unique inventions to help make measurements to organize his system. One of these inventions was the photometer. This device measured the luminance of an object, and Munsell used this to make measurements of different colors and to help define how color changes. This information would later become his three dimensions of color. He also patented an invention called the "Spinning Top". This device was similar to the rotating color wheel developed by James Maxwell, where several colors were placed on the top and the top was spun, mixing the colors together. Munsell used this device to measure the relationship between chroma and value, which helped him create templates for each step in chroma and value for every hue. With these tools, Munsell was able to define three dimensions that define color. He also paid close attention to the sensitivity of the human visual system, and considered this when creating the steps between colors in his system, particularly his value scale. He called these dimensions Hue, Value, and Chroma. Munsell Hue is the attribute of color by which we distinguish red from green, blue from yellow, and other colors. Munsell chose several colors to be the principal hues. These are Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple. These hues were arranged in a circle. Each hue can be mixed with the same amount of the neighboring hues to create intermediate hues: yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple. Each color can be defined by how much of each principal hue it contains. A color that is composed of just a principal hue would be given a number 5. So, the red primary would be given the number 5R. If you move to the left of the red hue, the number increases, with the color exactly in between red and yellow-red defined as 10R. Continuing around the circle, the number of the color goes back down to 1YR right after 10 red, until the color is composed of just the yellow-red primary, in which case the color would be 10YR. So, the number represents how much of the primary hue the color contains. Munsell Value defines the lightness of a color, or how much black or white the color contains. The neutral color scale, from black to white with neutral greys in between, all have a hue of 0, which means they do not contain any hue. Instead these colors only change in value. Black would have a value of 0N, with N designating value. White would have a value of 10N, and middle grey would have a value of 5N. A grey in between middle grey and black would have a value of 2.5N. This value scale is based upon visual experiments. The middle grey is visual perceived to have equal amounts of black and white, and so on for other greys. It was very important for Munsell to create a system that was based on the human visual response to color. The final dimension created was chroma. Before the Munsell color theory, chroma was not a term used in the art or scientific community. Instead, the intensity of color was defined as saturation. However, Munsell felt it appropriate to break up saturation into two different dimensions, namely value and chroma. Chroma defines the difference between a pure hue and a pure grey. So, a color with a chroma of 1 would be very close to a grey. It is important to note that the maximum chroma of a color is defined by the hue of the color. For example, a color with a yellow hue will have less chroma values than a color with purple hue. This is because of the human visual sensitivity to different hues. Again, this shows how the human visual system is modeled through the Munsell color theory. With each of the dimensions defined, it is now possible to distinguish a color based on its Munsell Notation. Take for example the color 2.5YR 3/4. This color is between red and yellow-red, but closer to yellow-red, has a value of 3 which is closer to black, and has a chroma of 4. Munsell also wanted to create a standard way of measuring and viewing color. To do this, he investigated the relationship between the color and the light source used for illumination. In short, he found that the light source used drastically effected the color perceived. To help in this investigation, Munsell visited the Edison Light Company. He eventually developed the standard for daylight viewing of colors for accurate color evaluation. Munsell color order system To help display and organize his color theory, Munsell created the Munsell color system. It is set up to organize each color by the color's hue, value, and chroma. Each dimension of a color can be changed independently of the other dimensions. This helped Munsell organize the colors in a three-dimension.... Discover the Albert Henry Munsell popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Albert Henry Munsell books.