The other two machines used colour-coded slips of paper and chips of wood to represent information.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue

It does everything from breeding new seeds and cattle, to creating ultra-thin edible wrapping paper for foodstuffs that changes colour when the food goes off, to running a nanotechnology laboratory creating biodegradable ultra-strong fabrics and wound dressings.

ECONOMIST: Brazilian agriculture

Last May, Plastic Logic demonstrated a paper-like flexible screen capable of playing video in colour, which is achieved by placing a filter on top of the original black-and-white display.

BBC: Bend me, shape me: Flexible phones 'out by 2013'

Participants also ward off evil during the festival by bathing in flower-scented water, wearing five-colour silk, hanging plants such as moxa and calamus over their doors, and pasting paper cut-outs in their windows.

UNESCO: Culture

Since 1976, Paul Kay of the University of California, Berkeley, another of the paper's authors, has compiled a database of information about how 110 different languages assign colour adjectives to 330 different hues.

ECONOMIST: Psychology