History of the Color Wheels

I recently came across this article about color wheels on colourlovers. 18th century color wheel designs look so marvelous. How did I forget what I've learned in 6th grand science class that Sir Isaac Newton has invented the first color wheel. He arranged red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet into a natural progression on a rotating disk. As the disk spins, the colors blur together so rapidly that the human eye sees white. From there the organization of color has taken many forms, from tables and charts, to triangles and wheels.

An Early 18th century color wheel

 

C.B. 1708

 Two color circles are included as illustrations in the 1708 edition of 

Traité de la peinture en mignature, 

an artist's manual attributed to "C.B."

(often assumed to be Claude Boutet, or the publisher, Christophe Ballard).

Ignaz Schiffermüller, 1772 & Goethe, 1810

 

 Richard Waller's, 1686

  

Schäffer's table

 Schäffer's principal colors were red, yellow, blue, white, black, brown, and green.

images from coluorlovers