Ridgway, Robert, Color standards and color nomenclature

(Washington, D. C. :  The author,  1912.)

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PREFACE
 

THE motive of this work is THE  STANDARDIZATION  OF
COLORS AND COLOR NAMES.

The terminology of Science, the Arts, and various In¬
dustries has been a most important factor in the development of
their present high efficiency. Measurements, weights, mathemat¬
ical and chemical formulae, and terms which clearly designate
practically every variation of form and structure have long been
standardized ; but the nomenclature of colors remains vague and,
for practical purposes, meaningless, thereby seriously impeding
progress in almost every branch of industry and research.

Many works on the subject of color have been published, but
most of them are purely technical, and pertain to the physics of
color, the painter's needs, or to some particular art or industry
alone, or in other ways are unsuited for the use of the zoologist,
the botanist, the pathologist, or the mineralogist; and the compar¬
atively few works on color intended specially for naturalists have
all failed to meet the requirements, either because of an insufficient
number of color samples, lack of names or other means of easy
identification or designation, or faulty selection and classification
of the colors chosen for illustration. More than twenty years ago
the author of the present work attempted to supply the deficiency
by the publication of a book* containing 185 samples of named

*A 1 Nomenclature of Colors | for Naturalists, | and | Compendium of Useful
Knowledge | for Ornithologists. | By | Robert Eidgway, ] Curator, Department of
Birds, United States National Museum. | With ten colored plates and seven plates | of
outline illustrations. | Boston : | Little, Brown, and Company. | 1886. 1 (12iuo., pp.
129, pis. 17.)

The subject of color and color nomenclature discussed on pages l.'-.5S. Plates
i-x, inclusive, represent 186 named colors, hand-paint«d (stencilled).
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