Feature

The Vision and Color World of Edwin Land

F. Dow Smith

During the late 1950s and early 1960s Edwin Land challenged the color vision establishment by describing a series of experiments with colored images that he claimed called for a broad rethinking of previously held theories of color perception. Given his fame as the widely known inventor of instant photography, his skill with dramatic lecture demonstrations and the personal drive with which he championed any new creative enterprise, it was not surprising that interest in the work would quickly spread throughout the scientific community and even beyond to national coverage in both the scientific and popular press.