Here are some additional sources to investigate related to the Light Touch column “Before Day-Glo”, by Stephen Wilk (Optics & Photonics News, December 2017).
Biographies of the Switzer brothers can be found on Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, the American Chemical Society web site, and in Jane and Michael Stern’s The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste (Harper Perennial, 1991, entry on “Day-Glo Colors,” p. 90).
History of fluorescence can be found in several places, but the Wikipedia entry is probably the most easily accessible and a good place to start.
Some other references of interest:
- George Gabriel Stokes. “On the change of refrangibility of light,” Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London 142, 463 (1852).
- Lewis Wright. Light: A Course in Experimental Optics, Chiefly with the Lantern (Macmillan, 1882), pp. 147-8.
- C.W. Parmelee. "the testing and valuation of raw materials used in paint and colour manufacture," J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 23.6, 436 (1901).
- A.H. Sabin. "The paint industry," Industrial & Engineering Chemistry 14.9, 775 (1922).
- A.H. Sabin. "Recipes for the colour, paint, varnish, oil, soap, and dry-saltery trades," J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 25.2, 219 (1903).
- The New York Hayden Planetarium black light murals were painted in 1954 and lasted until the planetarium’s renovation in 1999. Some images are here, in the December 29 2010 entry: https://www.facebook.com/Original-Hayden-Planetarium-182516465099038/