The Color Wheel Was Invented by Isaac Newton

For centuries, philosophers and artists believed that color was an intrinsic quality of an object or a simple mixture of light and darkness. This all changed when Isaac Newton, working in a darkened room, allowed a single beam of sunlight to pass through a glass prism. He observed that the prism refracted the white light, revealing the full spectrum of colors contained within it—from red to violet. This was a revolutionary insight: color was not a physical property of matter, but a property of light itself. An object simply appeared a certain color because it reflected that wavelength of light while absorbing all others.

Newton took this discovery a step further by taking the linear spectrum and arranging it into a circle, connecting the red and violet ends to create a continuous loop. This wasn't just for neatness; it was a tool to visualize the relationships between colors. He even associated the seven spectral colors with the seven notes of a musical scale, searching for a deeper, mathematical harmony in nature. This simple yet profound diagram became the first color wheel, laying the essential groundwork for modern color theory and giving artists and scientists a logical framework for understanding color harmony and mixing.