The first permanent colour photograph was taken by Thomas Sutton who was working with Clerk Maxwell and is a composite of three black and white pictures, each one taken through a red, green or blue filter.

BBC: Pioneering colour photography

Mr Ball next treats us to a brisk description of the human eye (remember rods and cones from school biology?), an explanation of why Newton was right and Goethe wrong about the composite character of white light, and an account of the 19th-century regimentation of the continuous colour spectrum by means of colour wheels and other classifying devices.

ECONOMIST: Science and history of colour