When Was The Last Time A New Colour Was Discovered?

[Hazi-Hammenuhoth]

Has mankind always been aware of all the colours we know today? Or were some discovered more recently?

[Old_Geezer]

All light frequencies have always existed from the time of the first light. Whether mankind has added more names and tighter definitions is another matter.

[maggiebee]

Terry Pratchett called Octarine the colour of magic. It is the eighth colour in the Discworld spectrum.

[jourdain2]

Can't properly answer this -someone will - but I read goodness-how-long-ago that as mankind evolved our vision also accepted new shades and colours. Terry Pratchett invented a new colour, just as an aside. We see more subtly than our forebears as new dyes for cloth etc. appeared. Hope this helps, but some knowlegable person will be along soon. :)

[Prudie]

Every band of the spectrum must have always existed in the world, it's only the names that will become new - there wouldn't have been a neon yellow for example in the middle ages, nor pillar-box red nor navy blue for that matter.

[Atheist]

Every living creature has been aware of colours, some of them visible light as we know it, some of them the colours of sound or smell. Nobody invents a colour.

[AZardoz]

[url=https://postimages.org/][img]https://i.postimg.cc/0ySMqhSB/men-women-colours.jpg[/img][/url]

[AZardoz]

https://i.postimg.cc/0ySMqhSB/men-women-colours.jpg

[Prudie]

^https://postimg.cc/6895rjYr

[pastafreak]

A new blue was discovered in 2009 by a university professor and chemist.

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-blue-discovery-2017-5?r=US&IR=T

[Mamyalynne]

A team of chemists are on the hunt for a new shade of red at the moment.

[Buenchico]

'Colours' are simply the names that we assign to different wavelengths of light (or to mixtures thereof). So they're not 'discoverd; they're simply assigned names. Paint manufacturers, for example, keep assigning all sorts of new names to the products in their ranges but they've not really been 'discovered', simply given names.

If you recognise 'black' as a 'colour' though (rather than as the absence of colour), you could say that vantablack was discovered in the early years of this century. It's strictly a product name but the word can also used to describe its colour (or lack of it), since it's the blackest black in the world - or, rather, it was until last year when an even blacker substance was discovered (but neither that material, nor its colour, seem to have been named yet).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack

https://news.mit.edu/2019/blackest-black-material-cnt-0913

[Mamyalynne]

My Husband used to love it when customers would ask him to use 'whatever black or white 'paint he had left on the shelf in his respray shop.

'You won't like it and certainly won't want to pay me for my time' he'd reply.

They never believed how many different shades/tones there were.

[JimF]

Not all peoples of the world "see" colours the same way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate

E.g. for British people, there is a tendency to lump shades of colour together using the qualifiers "light" and "dark" where other places see the as completely different and have completely difference names for them. If you look here at the graphic in the top right corner here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_blue, top left and bottom left are fairly obviously different colours, yet we'd probably call them light blue and dark blue.

Also, some cultures see blue and green completely the opposite way round, e.g. referring to grass as blue etc. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language

[douglas9401]

You answered this in your previous question:

White privilege.

[woofgang]

Terry Pratchett made a name up but the colour doesn't exist in this universe because it requires a strong magical field.

[Ken4155]

As we were walking through a local park, my then 7 year old son asked me, "Dad, was grass green when you were my age?"

[Buenchico]

Of course the grass wasn't green when you were a kid, Ken. Everything was in black and white then ;-)

[Ken4155]

Yes, chico, then I became a painter and decorator and coloured everything in - keeping to the lines, of course. :-)