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COLOR SPHERE
(115) For instance, had rotation discovered the persistence of reddish gray, it would have proved the red too strong, or its opposite, blue-green, too weak, and we should have been forced to retrace our steps, applying a correction until neutrality was established by the rotation test.
(116) This is the practical demonstration of the assertion (Chapter I., paragraph 8) that a color has three dimensions which can be measured. Each of these ten middle hues has proved its right to a definite place on the color globe by its measurements of value and chroma. Being of equal chroma, all are equidistant from the neutral centre, and, being equal in value, all are equally removed from the poles. If the warm hues (red and yellow) or the cool hues (blue and green) were in excess, the rotation test of the sphere would fail to produce grayness, and so detect its lack of balance.[1]
A chromatic tuning fork.
(117) The five principal steps in this color equator are made in permanent enamel and carefully safeguarded, so that, if the pigments painted on the globe should change or become soiled, it could be at once detected and set right. These five are middle red (so called because midway between white and black, as well as midway between our strongest red and the neutral centre), middle yellow, middle green, middle blue, and middle purple. They may be called the chromatic tuning fork, for they serve to establish the pitch of colors, as the musical tuning fork preserves the pitch of sounds.
Completion of a pigment color sphere.
(118) When the chromatic tuning fork has thus been obtained,
- ↑ Such a test would have exposed the excess of warm color in the schemes of Runge and Chevreul, as shown in the Appendix to this chapter.
