History of color metrics

Abstract

Though the physical principles and visual mechanisms underlying color have been studied for centuries, the modern colorimetric system used to quantify and specify the color properties of light sources and illumination had not even begun to be developed 100 years ago. Because color only exists when the physical properties of light and materials interact with the human visual system, any such system must essentially model the link between physics and perception. This is an enormously difficult task and the colorimetric system hasn't always been successful. Nonetheless, since the origin of colorimetry in the early twentieth century, remarkable progress has been made.