munsell colour system

Albert H. Munsell (1858-1918) was an artist and a professor. His turn-of-the-century research on color still influences the way color is interpreted today.

Professor Albert H. Munsell brought clarity to color communication by establishing an orderly system for accurately identifying every color that exists. Munsell based his system on what he defined as “perceived equidistance,” the human visual system’s perception of color.

“As a practicing artist and teacher, Albert Munsell understood the importance of being able to communicate clearly about color. He devoted his life to studying color and developed a systematic way of ordering and describing color that has proved accurate and flexible enough to endure from 1915, when The Atlas of the Munsell Color Order System was published, until today. A color system is a collection of all possible colors arranged so the relationships among them can be recognized. There have been many of these through the years, but none have been accepted so widely or used as long as the Munsell Color System.”

–From the book, The Munsell Color System A Language for Color, by Joy Turner Luke
  

 Munsell Colour is now a part of the GretagMacbeth Corporation.  Research into Colour Science is currently being conducted at the Rochester Institute of Technology, United States of America.