Our contemporary understanding of the concept of colour is rooted in Newton's work, Optics (1730), in which he demonstrated that white light was made up of coloured light. Soon after the publication of Optics, physicists were able to show that visible light resulted from electromagnetic waves of a cetrain frequency. The area of the electro-magnetic spectrum that we see as light lies between frequencies of 360 nanometres and 760 nanometres. However an objects hue is rarely of a single frequency, or monochromatic, rather it is comprised of a number of frequencies, with a dominant one determining the perceived colour. We are able to diffrentiate between approximately 200 monochromatic colours, and in the yellows, where our colour sensitivity is greatest, we are able to detect differences of as little as 0.1 nanometres.
Our colour perception mechanism begins with light sensitive cells in the retina, called cones.…
