[visionlist] [cvnet] Robert Musil and the Color Wheel

[Prof. Michael Bach]

Dear Christopher + All:

> However, in 1855 Maxwell invented the colour top for mixing colours (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2007.2178). What, then, did Musil invent in 1906?
In your reference (thank you) it says about Maxwell’s machine: "The three coloured paper discs could be clamped to the wooden disc of the top in such a way as to allow different amounts of the primary colours to be mixed when the top was spun…”.
Musil’s contraption allowed to vary the sector contributions while spinning. That’s why in that beautiful old Spindler & Hoyer catalogue it’s called “Variation Top” (my literal translation). That had already been possible in an apparatus after Marbe (it says there), but Musil’s improvement seems to have been a more precise way to measure the sector relationships while rotating.

So he went on to write “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften”… interesting; thank you, Don.


Best, Michael
-- 
Prof. Michael Bach PhD, Eye Center, University of Freiburg, Germany. 
Michael.Bach at uni-freiburg.de   <https://michaelbach.de>