Logo image
Back
Ragona-Sciná's (1847) method for, and observations of, simultaneous color contrast
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Ragona-Sciná's (1847) method for, and observations of, simultaneous color contrast

R.P. O'Shea, S. Brini and N.J. Wade
i-Perception, Vol.7(2)
2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2041669516643239
pdf
simultaneous color contrast.pdfDownloadView
Published (Version of Record)CC BY V4.0,  Open Access
url
Free to Read *No subscription requiredView

Abstract

In 1847, Domenico Ragona-Sciná (1820-1892) published a method of optically superimposing images using an angled piece of colored glass. He showed that if one looks at a black, filled circle through the colored glass and superimposes on it the reflection from the glass of something white, the filled circle looks tinted with the complementary color of the background: simultaneous color contrast or contrast color. Although Ragona-Sciná's method and his observation have been cited into the 21st century, the former for its simplicity and the latter for its challenges to early theories of color vision, some errors have crept in and the phenomenon still lacks an agreed-on explanation. We provide some biographical information about Ragona-Sciná, set the method and the observation into their historical and theoretical contexts, and give a translation into English of Ragona-Sciná's Italian-language paper.

Details

Metrics

206 File views/ downloads
36 Record Views
2 Times Cited - Web of Science

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Citation topics
1 Clinical & Life Sciences
1.7 Neuroscanning
1.7.203 Visual Perception
Web Of Science research areas
Psychology, Experimental
ESI research areas
Psychiatry/Psychology
Logo image