MACHINE WHICH MATCHES COLOURS ABOLISHES GUESSWORK

Shannon News, 31 December 1928, Page 3

MACHINE WHICH MATCHES COLOURS ABOLISHES GUESSWORK

WASHINGTON. Announcement of a machine to take all the guesswork out of matching coJ ours was made before the convention o! the Optical Society of America. - By its aid, the wife may .cable from Paris asking her husband t’o match in the home town a shade of colour tha: she describes as striking her fancy, am; in can be done. Further, it can In done in less than a minute by the nm chine and so exactly as to leave no ground for argument. « The apparatus is named the ™re cording spectrophotometer.” It was demonstrated before the convention In -,u inventor, Prof. Arthur'C. Hardy, o: the department of physics of the Mas sachusetts Institute of Technology, at present attached to the staff of the research laboratory of! the General Electric Company. Professor Hardy s machine is based on the simplest theory of colour that every schoolboy is taught, namely that, colour is determined by the . number and kind of light rays which its surface reflects.

In less than a minute this apparatus draws a chart on an ink line that gives the precise amount of each colour of the spectrum necessary to exact reproduction of the shade under analysis.

Among applications of the machine ho described the possibility of cabling from abroad the description of a new dye and reproducing in this country the new shade before even a- sample of it could arrive by boat. :

Should a colour fade, the chart makes possible reproduction of the original. The machine has been tested on tints of oils in which a shade of difference changes commercial values by thousands of dollars,- on fruits to determine their best marketing colour and on such diverse articles of trade as soap, automobiles, chocolate ,and roofing materials.