Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern PDF
Preview Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern
“Exceptional books about science are rare. This is one of them.” — D EBORAH BLUM $28.00 Higher in Canada F “I love it when someone wakes me up to see what I was sleepwalking F U L L U through. Adam Rogers does that in this book. He showed me that the colors we see everywhere today are technologies we invented. Invented colors! L Head explodes!” A LIVELY ACCOUNT OF OUR AGE-OLD QUEST FOR L — KEVIN KELLY, New York Times best-selling author of The Inevitable MORE VIVID COLORS, WHICH CHANGED THE WAY S WE SEE THE WORLD, FROM THE BEST-SELLING “Adam Rogers’s book Full Spectrum is everything you’d want from a book P AUTHOR OF PROOF: THE SCIENCE OF BOOZE about color — shining with the full gemstone range of blues, golds, greens, S P E C T R U M E and carnelian reds that tint the world around us. But woven through it, like the threads of a tapestry, is so much more: history, science, the rainbow C from the blue of sky meeting ocean to the spectrum of human culture in its many hues. Exceptional books about sci- ADAM ROGERS T luminous moment when a black-and-yellow bee is the New York Times best- ence are rare. This is one of them.” selling author of Proof: The Science of Booze, R touches a bright-pink flower, our world practi- — DEBORAH BLUM, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of cally vibrates with colors. But the human-made a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary The Poison Squad and The Poisoner’s Handbook U versions haven’t always matched nature’s kalei- Science Writing Award and winner of an IACP Award and a Gourmand Award. He is a senior M doscopic array. To reach those brightest heights “This is a wonderfully human book that takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic required millennia of remarkable innovation correspondent at Wired. tour of the world of color science. It is one of those books that makes you and a fascinating exchange of ideas between see everything afresh — you’ll start identifying pigments everywhere, and science and craft that’s allowed for the multi- diving back into the book to discover the intellectual quest behind them.” colored manifestations of our built and adorned — MARK MIODOWNIK, New York Times best-selling author of world. Stuff Matters and Liquid Rules In Full Spectrum, Adam Rogers takes us on that globe-trotting journey, tracing an arc from A “There’s a word for the color you see when you turn off the lights: it’s called the earliest humans to our digitized, synthe- D ‘eigengrau,’ or brain gray. Reading this book is like cranking the dimmer sized present and future. We meet our ancestors switch up, chapter by chapter, from eigengrau to Full Spectrum. Illuminat- A mashing ochre in caves, Silk Road merchants ing, funny, and utterly fascinating, Adam Rogers draws on history, chemistry, competing for the best ceramics, and textile M biology, and geology to reveal that we’ve engineered a far more colorful HOW THE SCIENCE OF COLOR artists cracking the centuries-old mystery of world than the one our ancestors inhabited. Prepare to be dazzled; after you how colors mix, before shooting to the modern y read this book, you’ll never see color the same way again.” R MADE US MODERN era for high-stakes corporate espionage and the n mpa — ZIYA TONG, science broadcaster and author of The Reality Bubble O digital revolution that’s rewriting the rules of o color forever. C ng G In prose as vibrant as its subject, Rogers Jacket design by Brian Moore hi “This book is the best kind of deep dive into its subject, and Adam Rogers is Jacket image: Bluestocking / E+ / Getty Images blis my favorite kind of science writer. Reading this book feels like having a long, E A D A M R O G E R S opens the door to Oz, sharing the liveliest Author photograph © Jenna Garrett Pu fascinating, and delicious meal with the most interesting person you know.” events of an expansive human quest — to make a urt R brighter, more beautiful world — and, along the co — ADAM SAVAGE, executive producer and cohost of MythBusters, r way, proving why he’s “one of the best science a S H science communicator, and maker n writers around” (National Geographic). Available as an e-book and an audiobook ffli Mi n $28.00 Higher in Canada NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF o ISBN 978-1-328-51890-3 ht HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT g PROOF: THE SCIENCE OF BOOZE u o H HMHBOOKS.COM © 0521 1720441 RRooggeerrss__FFUULLLL--SSPPEECCTTRRUUMM__jjaacckkeett__ffiinnaall..iinndddd 11 4-color on soft-touch matte lam with embossing 22//2222//2211 44::0011 PPMM “Exceptional books about science are rare. This is one of them.” — D EBORAH BLUM $28.00 Higher in Canada F “I love it when someone wakes me up to see what I was sleepwalking F U L L U through. Adam Rogers does that in this book. He showed me that the colors we see everywhere today are technologies we invented. Invented colors! L Head explodes!” A LIVELY ACCOUNT OF OUR AGE-OLD QUEST FOR L — KEVIN KELLY, New York Times best-selling author of The Inevitable MORE VIVID COLORS, WHICH CHANGED THE WAY S WE SEE THE WORLD, FROM THE BEST-SELLING “Adam Rogers’s book Full Spectrum is everything you’d want from a book P AUTHOR OF PROOF: THE SCIENCE OF BOOZE about color — shining with the full gemstone range of blues, golds, greens, S P E C T R U M E and carnelian reds that tint the world around us. But woven through it, like the threads of a tapestry, is so much more: history, science, the rainbow C from the blue of sky meeting ocean to the spectrum of human culture in its many hues. Exceptional books about sci- ADAM ROGERS T luminous moment when a black-and-yellow bee is the New York Times best- ence are rare. This is one of them.” selling author of Proof: The Science of Booze, R touches a bright-pink flower, our world practi- — DEBORAH BLUM, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of cally vibrates with colors. But the human-made a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary The Poison Squad and The Poisoner’s Handbook U versions haven’t always matched nature’s kalei- Science Writing Award and winner of an IACP Award and a Gourmand Award. He is a senior M doscopic array. To reach those brightest heights “This is a wonderfully human book that takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic required millennia of remarkable innovation correspondent at Wired. tour of the world of color science. It is one of those books that makes you and a fascinating exchange of ideas between see everything afresh — you’ll start identifying pigments everywhere, and science and craft that’s allowed for the multi- diving back into the book to discover the intellectual quest behind them.” colored manifestations of our built and adorned — MARK MIODOWNIK, New York Times best-selling author of world. Stuff Matters and Liquid Rules In Full Spectrum, Adam Rogers takes us on that globe-trotting journey, tracing an arc from A “There’s a word for the color you see when you turn off the lights: it’s called the earliest humans to our digitized, synthe- D ‘eigengrau,’ or brain gray. Reading this book is like cranking the dimmer sized present and future. We meet our ancestors switch up, chapter by chapter, from eigengrau to Full Spectrum. Illuminat- A mashing ochre in caves, Silk Road merchants ing, funny, and utterly fascinating, Adam Rogers draws on history, chemistry, competing for the best ceramics, and textile M biology, and geology to reveal that we’ve engineered a far more colorful HOW THE SCIENCE OF COLOR artists cracking the centuries-old mystery of world than the one our ancestors inhabited. Prepare to be dazzled; after you how colors mix, before shooting to the modern y read this book, you’ll never see color the same way again.” R MADE US MODERN era for high-stakes corporate espionage and the n mpa — ZIYA TONG, science broadcaster and author of The Reality Bubble O digital revolution that’s rewriting the rules of o color forever. C ng G In prose as vibrant as its subject, Rogers Jacket design by Brian Moore hi “This book is the best kind of deep dive into its subject, and Adam Rogers is Jacket image: Bluestocking / E+ / Getty Images blis my favorite kind of science writer. Reading this book feels like having a long, E A D A M R O G E R S opens the door to Oz, sharing the liveliest Author photograph © Jenna Garrett Pu fascinating, and delicious meal with the most interesting person you know.” events of an expansive human quest — to make a urt R brighter, more beautiful world — and, along the co — ADAM SAVAGE, executive producer and cohost of MythBusters, r way, proving why he’s “one of the best science a S H science communicator, and maker n writers around” (National Geographic). Available as an e-book and an audiobook ffli Mi n $28.00 Higher in Canada NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF o ISBN 978-1-328-51890-3 ht HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT g PROOF: THE SCIENCE OF BOOZE u o H HMHBOOKS.COM © 0521 1720441 RRooggeerrss__FFUULLLL--SSPPEECCTTRRUUMM__jjaacckkeett__ffiinnaall..iinndddd 11 4-color on soft-touch matte lam with embossing 22//2222//2211 44::0011 PPMM FULL SPECTRUM Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 1 2/9/21 10:33 AM Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 2 2/9/21 10:33 AM F U L L S P E C T R U M HOW THE SCIENCE OF COLOR MADE US MODERN A D A M R O G E R S Houghton Mifflin Harcourt boston new york 2021 Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 3 2/9/21 10:33 AM Copyright © 2021 by Adam Rogers All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@ hmhco .com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. Portions of this book first appeared, in different form, in Wired in articles titled “The Dress,” “Vantablack,” and “Colors Are How Your Brain Makes the World,” all by Adam Rogers. hmhbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rogers, Adam, 1970– author. Title: Full spectrum : how the science of color made us modern / Adam Rogers. Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039337 (print) | LCCN 2020039338 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328518903 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358449379 | ISBN 9780358449010 | ISBN 9781328519146 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Color — Physiological effect. | Color — Psychological aspects. | Color vision. | Color (Philosophy) Classification: LCC QP483 .R64 2021 (print) | LCC QP483 (ebook) | DDC 152.14/5 — dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039337 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039338 Book design by Kelly Dubeau Smydra Printed in the United States of America ScoutAutomatedPrintCode $ScoutAutomatedPO Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 4 2/11/21 3:20 PM For Melissa and the kids Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 5 2/9/21 10:33 AM Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 6 2/9/21 10:33 AM CONTENTS Introduction ix chapter 1: Earth Tones 1 chapter 2: Ceramics 18 chapter 3: Rainbows 37 chapter 4: The Lead White of Commerce 59 chapter 5: World’s Fair 83 chapter 6: Titanium White 106 chapter 7: Color Words 138 chapter 8: The Dress 160 chapter 9: Fake Colors and Color Fakes 175 chapter 10: Screens 189 Conclusion 213 Acknowledgments 225 Notes 228 Bibliography 260 Index 294 Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 7 2/9/21 10:33 AM Rogers_FULL-SPECTRUM_interior_FINAL.indd 8 2/9/21 10:33 AM
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