"The next publication by Young on his theory of color... a paper read by him before the , on July 1, 1802... "An account of some cases of the production of colours, not hitherto described." ... Young changed his three elementary color-sensations from red, yellow, and blue, to red, green, and violet, in consequence of Dr. Wollaston's correction of the description of the prismatic spectrum." ... Wollaston... only observed imperfectly the dark lines of the spectrum, now known as Fraunhofer's lines, but he imagined he saw a spectrum... divided into four distinct and separated "primary divisions." He at once inferred and erroneously that Newton's analysis... was false; that no orange or yellow exists... but between the red and the blue there exists only a "yellowish green." ...Young made a similar but even greater error in his description... I imagine that when Wollaston's sharp eye caught the glimpse of the divided spectrum he naturally thought... that the dark lines were the dividing lines of the pure simple colors of the solar spectrum. ... Young in finally selecting red, green and violet as the three elementary color-sensations was not, as Helmholtz states, guided in their choice "by the consideration that the extreme colors of the spectrum occupied the privileged positions," but selected those colors on hearing of Wollaston's supposed complete analysis of the sun's light into red, greenish blue and violet colors, separated from each other in the spectrum by dark spaces."
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Archaeologists from EnglandPolymathsNatural philosophersScientists from EnglandPhilosophers from England
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Thomas Young (scientist)
Thomas Young (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was an English genius and polymath, admired by, among others, William Herschel and Albert Einstein. He is famous for having partly deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-Francois Champollion eventually expanded on his work.
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