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Blue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BlueFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the colour. For other uses, see Blue
(disambiguation).
Blue
Spectral coordinates
Wavelength 450495 nm
Frequency ~670610 THz
Colour coordinates
Hex triplet #0000FF
sRGBB (r, g, b) (0, 0, 255)
HSV (h, s, v) (240, 100%, 100%)
Source HTML/CSS[1]
B: Normalized to [0255] (byte)
Blue is the colour of the clear sky and the deep sea.[2]
On the optical spectrum, blue is located between violet and
green.[3]
Surveys in the U.S. and Europe show that blue is the colour most
commonly associated with harmony, faithfulness, and confidence. In
U.S. and European public
opinion polls it is overwhelmingly the most popular colour,
chosen by almost half of both men and women as their favourite
colour.[4]
It is also commonly associated with the sky, the sea, ice, cold,
and sometimes with sadness.
Contents l 1 Shades and variationsl 2 Etymology and linguistic
differencesl 3 History
m 3.1 In the ancient worldm 3.2 In the Byzantine Empire and the
Islamic Worldm 3.3 During the Middle Agesm 3.4 In the European
Renaissancem 3.5 Blue and white porcelainm 3.6 The war of the blues
indigo versus woadm 3.7 The blue Uniformm 3.8 The search for the
perfect bluem 3.9 The Impressionist paintersm 3.10 The blue suitm
3.11 In the 20th and 21st century
l 4 In science and industry m 4.1 Pigments and dyesm 4.2 Opticsm
4.3 Scientific natural standardsm 4.4 Why the clear sky and the
deep sea are seen as bluem 4.5 Atmospheric perspectivem 4.6 Blue
eyesm 4.7 Lasers
l 5 In nature m 5.1 Animals
l 6 In world culture m 6.1 As a national and international
colourm 6.2 Politicsm 6.3 Religionm 6.4 Genderm 6.5 Musicm 6.6
Associations and sayings
l 7 Sports m 7.1 The blues of antiquitym 7.2 Association
football
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m 7.3 North American sporting leaguesl 8 See alsol 9
References
m 9.1 Bibliographym 9.2 Notes and citations
l 10 External links
Shades and variationsMain article: Shades of blue
Blue is the colour of light between violet and green on the
visible spectrum. Hues of blue include indigo and ultramarine,
closer to violet; pure blue, without any mixture of other colours;
Cyan, which is midway on
the spectrum between blue and green, and the other blue-greens
turquoise, teal, and aquamarine.
Blues also vary in shade or tint; darker shades of blue contain
black or grey, while lighter tints contain white. Darker shades of
blue include ultramarine, cobalt blue, navy blue, and Prussian
blue; while lighter tints
include sky blue, azure, and Egyptian blue. (For a more complete
list see the List of colours).
Blue pigments were originally made from minerals such as lapis
lazuli, cobalt and azurite, and blue dyes were made from plants;
usually woad in Europe, and Indigofera tinctoria, or True indigo,
in Asia and Africa.
Today most blue pigments and dyes are made by a chemical
process.
l
Blue is the colour of the deep sea and the clear sky. The
harbour of Toulon, France, on the Mediterranean Sea.
l
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Pure blue, also known as high blue, is not mixed with any other
colours.
l
Navy blue, also known as low blue, is the darkest shade of pure
blue.
l
Sky blue or pale azure, mid-way on the RBG colour wheel between
blue and cyan.
l
Extract of natural Indigo, the most popular blue dye before the
invention of synthetic dyes. It was the colour of the first blue
jeans.
l
A block of lapis lazuli, originally used to make
ultramarine.
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l
Ultramarine, the most expensive blue during the Renaissance, is
a slightly violet-blue.
l
Cobalt has been used since 2000 BC to colour cobalt glass,
Chinese porcelain, and the stained glass windows of medieval
cathedrals.
l
The synthetic pigment cobalt blue was invented in 1802, and was
popular with Vincent van Gogh and other impressionist painters.
l
Cyan is made by mixing equal amounts of blue and green light, or
removing red from white light.
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l
The colour teal takes its name from the colour around the eyes
of the common teal duck.
l
Egyptian blue goblet from Mesopotamia, 15001300 BC. This was the
first synthetic blue, first made in about 2500 BC.
l
Prussian blue, invented in 1707, was the first modern synthetic
blue.
l
Cerulean blue pigment was invented in 1805 and first marketed in
1860. It was frequently used for painting skies.
Etymology and linguistic
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The modern English word blue comes from Middle English bleu or
blewe, from the Old French bleu, a word of Germanic origin, related
to the Old High German word blao.[5]
In heraldry, the word azure is used for
blue.[6]
In Russian and some other languages, there is no single word for
blue, but rather different words for light blue (, goluboy) and
dark blue (, siniy).
Several languages, including Japanese, Thai, Korean, and Lakota
Sioux, use the same word to describe blue and green. For example,
in Vietnamese the colour of both tree leaves and the sky is xanh.
In Japanese,
the word for blue ( ao) is often used for colours that English
speakers would refer to as green, such as the colour of a traffic
signal meaning "go". (For more on this subject, see Distinguishing
blue from green in language)
HistoryIn the ancient world
Blue was a latecomer among colours used in art and decoration,
as well as language and literature.[7]
Reds, blacks, browns, and ochres are found in cave paintings
from the Upper Paleolithic period, but not blue.
Blue was also not used for dyeing fabric until long after red,
ochre, pink and purple. This is probably due to the perennial
difficulty of making good blue dyes and pigments.[8]
The earliest known blue dyes were made from plants woad in
Europe, indigo in Asia and Africa, while blue pigments were made
from minerals, usually either lapis lazuli or azurite.
Lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, has been mined in
Afghanistan for more than three thousand years, and was exported to
all parts of the ancient world.[9]
In Iran and Mesopotamia, it was used to make jewellery and
vessels. In Egypt, it was used for the eyebrows on the funeral mask
of King Tutankhamun (13411323 BC).[10]
The cost of importing lapis lazuli by caravan across the desert
from Afghanistan to Egypt was extremely high. Beginning in about
2500 BC, the ancient Egyptians began to produce their own blue
pigment known as
Egyptian blue, made by grinding silica, lime, copper and
alkalai, and heating it to 800 or 900 degrees C. This is considered
the first synthetic pigment.[11]
Egyptian blue was used to paint wood, papyrus and canvas, and
was used to colour a glaze to make faience beads, inlays, and pots.
It was particularly used in funeral statuary and figurines and in
tomb paintings. Blue was a considered a beneficial colour which
would protect
the dead against evil in the afterlife. Blue dye was also used
to colour the cloth in which mummies were wrapped.[12]
In Egypt, blue was associated with the sky and with divinity.
The Egyptian god Amun could make his skin blue so that he could
fly, invisible, across the sky. Blue could also protect against
evil; many people
around the Mediterranean still wear a blue amulet, representing
the eye of God, to protect them from misfortune.[13]
Blue glass was manufactured in Mesopotamia and Egypt as early as
2500 BC, using the same copper ingredients as Egyptian blue
pigment. They also added cobalt, which produced a deeper blue, the
same blue
produced in the Middle Ages in the stained glass windows of the
cathedrals of Saint-Denis and Chartres.[14]
The Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon (604562 BC) was decorated
with deep blue glazed bricks used as a background for pictures of
lions, dragons and aurochs.[15]
The ancient Greeks classified colours by whether they were light
or dark, rather than by their hue. The Greek word for dark blue,
kyaneos, could also mean dark green, violet, black or brown. The
ancient Greek
word for a light blue, glaukos, also could mean light green,
grey, or yellow.[16]
The Greeks imported indigo dye from India, calling it indikon.
They used Egyptian blue in the wall paintings of Knossos, in Crete,
(2100 BC). It was not one of the four primary colours for Greek
painting
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described by Pliny the Elder (red, yellow, black and white), but
nonetheless it was used as a background colour behind the friezes
on Greek temples and to colour the beards of Greek statues.[17]
The Romans also imported indigo dye, but blue was the colour of
working class clothing; the nobles and rich wore white, black, red
or violet. Blue was considered the colour of mourning. It was also
considered the
colour of barbarians; Julius Caesar reported that the Celts and
Germans dyed their faces blue to frighten their enemies, and tinted
their hair blue when they grew old.[18]
Nonetheless, the Romans made extensive use of blue for
decoration. According to Vitruvius, they made dark blue pigment
from indigo, and imported Egyptian blue pigment. The walls of Roman
villas in Pompeii
had frescoes of brilliant blue skies, and blue pigments were
found in the shops of colour merchants.[17]
The Romans had many different words for varieties of blue,
including caeruleus, caesius, glaucus, cyaneus, lividus, venetus,
aerius, and ferreus, but two words, both of foreign origin, became
the most enduring; blavus, from the Germanic word blau, which
eventually became bleu or blue; and azureus, from the Arabic
word lazaward, which became azure.[19]
l
Lapis lazuli pendant from Mesopotamia (Circa 2900 BC).
l
A lapis azuli bowl from Iran (End of 3rd, beginning 2nd
millennium BC)
l
A hippo decorated with aquatic plants, made of faience with a
blue glaze, made to resemble lapis lazuli. (20331710 BC)
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Egyptian blue colour in a tomb painting (Around 1500 BC)
l
Egyptian faience bowl (Between 1550 and 1450 BC)
l
a decorated cobalt glass vessel from Ancient Egypt (14501350
BC)
l
The blue eyebrows in the gold funeral mask of King Tutankhamun
are made of lapis lazuli. Other blues in the mask are made of
turquoise, glass and faience.
l
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Figure of a servant from the tomb of King Seth I (12441279 BC).
The figure is made of faience with a blue glaze, designed to
resemble turquoise.
l
A lion against a blue background from the Ishtar Gate of ancient
Babylon. (575 BC)
l
A Roman wall painting of Venus and her son Eros, from Pompeii
(about 30 BC)
l
Mural in the bedroom of the villa of Fannius Synestor in
Boscoreale, (50-40 BC) in the Metropolitan Museum.
l
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A painted pottery pot coloured with Han blue from the Han
Dynasty in China (206 BC to 220 AD).
l
A tomb painting from the eastern Han Dynasty (25220 AD) in Henan
Province, China.
In the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World
Dark blue was widely used in the decoration of churches in the
Byzantine Empire. In Byzantine art Christ and the Virgin Mary
usually wore dark blue or purple. Blue was used as a background
colour representing
the sky in the magnificent mosaics which decorated Byzantine
churches.[20]
In the Islamic world, blue was of secondary importance to green,
believed to be the favourite colour of the Prophet Mohammed. At
certain times in Moorish Spain and other parts of the Islamic
world, blue was the
colour worn by Christians and Jews, because only Muslims were
allowed to wear white and green.[21]
Dark blue and turquoise decorative tiles were widely used to
decorate the facades and interiors of mosques and palaces from
Spain to Central Asia. Lapis lazuli pigment was also used to create
the rich blues in Persian miniatures.
l
Blue Byzantine mosaic ceiling representing the night sky in the
Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy (5th century).
l
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Blue mosaic in the cloak of Christ in the Hagia Sophia church in
Istanbul (13th century).
l
Glazed stone-paste bowl from Persia (12th century).
l
Decorated page of a Koran from Persia (1373 AD)
l
Blue tile on the facade of the Friday Mosque in Herat,
Afghanistan (15th century).
l
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Persian miniature from the 16th century.
l
Decoration in the Murat III hall of the Topkapi Palace in
Istanbul (16th century).
l
Flower-pattern tile from Iznik, Turkey, from second half of 16th
century.
l
Gazelle against a blue sky in the Alhambra Palace, Spain (14th
century)
During the Middle Ages
In the art and life of Europe during the early Middle Ages, blue
played a minor role. The nobility wore red or purple, while only
the poor wore blue clothing, coloured with poor-quality dyes made
from the woad
plant. Blue played no part in the rich costumes of the clergy or
the architecture or decoration of churches. This changed
dramatically between 1130 and 1140 in Paris, when the Abbe Suger
rebuilt the Saint Denis
Basilica. He installed stained glass windows coloured with
cobalt, which, combined with the light from the red glass, filled
the church with a bluish violet light. The church became the marvel
of the Christian
world, and the colour became known as the "bleu de Saint-Denis".
In the years that followed even more elegant blue stained glass
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Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.[22]
Another important factor in the increased prestige of the colour
blue in the 12th century was the veneration of the Virgin Mary, and
a change in the colours used to depict her clothing. In earlier
centuries her robes
had usually been painted in sombre black, grey, violet, dark
green or dark blue. In the 12th century they began to be painted a
rich lighter blue, usually made with a new pigment imported from
Asia; ultramarine.
Blue became associated with holiness, humility and virtue.
Ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli, from the mines of
Badakshan, in the mountains of Afghanistan, near the source of the
Oxus River. The mines were visited by Marco Polo in about 1271; he
reported, "here
is found a high mountain from which they extract the finest and
most beautiful of blues." Ground lapis was used in Byzantine
manuscripts as early as the 6th century, but it was impure and
varied greatly in colour.
Ultramarine refined out the impurities through a long and
difficult process, creating a rich and deep blue. It was called
bleu outremer in French and blu otramere in Italian, since it came
from the other side of the
sea. It cost far more than any other colour, and it became the
luxury colour for the Kings and Princes of Europe.[23]
King Louis IX of France, better known as Saint Louis (12141270),
became the first King of France to regularly dress in blue. This
was copied by other nobles. Paintings of the mythical King Arthur
began to show
him dressed in blue. The coat of arms of the Kings of France
became an azure or light blue shield, sprinkled with golden
fleur-de-lis or lilies. Blue had come from obscurity to become the
royal colour.[24]
Once blue became the colour of the King, it also became the
colour of the wealthy and powerful in Europe. In the Middle Ages in
France and to some extent in Italy, the dyeing of blue cloth was
subject to license from the crown or state. In Italy, the dyeing of
blue was assigned to a specific guild, he tintori di guado, and
could not be done by anyone else without severe penalty. The
wearing of blue implied some dignity and
some wealth.[25]
Besides ultramarine, Several other blues were widely used in the
Middle Ages and later in the Renaissance. Azurite, a form of copper
carbonate, was often used as a substitute for ultramarine. The
Romans used it
under the name lapis armenius, or Armenian stone. The British
called it azure of Amayne, or German azure. The Germans themselves
called it bergblau, or mountain stone. It was mined in France,
Hungary, Spain
and Germany, and it made a pale blue with a hint of green, which
was ideal for painting skies. It was a favourite background colour
of the German painter Albrecht Drer.[26]
Another blue often used in the Middle Ages was called tournesol
or folium. It was made from the plant Crozophora tinctoria, which
grew in the south of France. It made a fine transparent blue valued
in medieval
manuscripts.[27]
Another common blue pigment was smalt, which was made by
grinding blue cobalt glass into a fine powder. It made a deep
violet blue similar to ultramarine, and was vivid in frescoes, but
it lost some of its
brilliance in oil paintings. It became especially popular in the
17th century, when ultramarine was difficult to obtain. It was
employed at times by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, El Greco, Van
Dyck, Rubens and
Rembrandt.[28]
l
Stained glass windows of the Basilica of Saint Denis
(11411144).
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l
Notre Dame de la Belle Verrire window, Chartres Cathedral.
(11801225).
l
Detail of the windows at Sainte-Chapelle (1250).
l
The Maesta by Duccio (1308) showed the Virgin Mary in a robe
painted with ultramarine. Blue became the colour of holiness,
virtue and humility.
l
In the 12th century blue became part of the royal coat of arms
of France.
l
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The Wilton Diptych, made for King Richard II of England, made
lavish use of ultramarine. (About 1400)
l
The Coronation of King Louis VIII of France in 1223 showed that
blue had become the royal colour. (painted in 1450).
In the European Renaissance
In the Renaissance, a revolution occurred in painting; artists
began to paint the world as it was actually seen, with perspective,
depth, shadows, and light from a single source. Artists had to
adapt their use of blue to
the new rules. In medieval paintings, blue was used to attract
the attention of the viewer to the Virgin Mary, and identify her.
In Renaissance paintings, artists tried to create harmonies between
blue and red,
lightening the blue with lead white paint and adding shadows and
highlights. Raphael was a master of this technique, carefully
balancing the reds and the blues so no one colour dominated the
picture.[29]
Utramarine was the most prestigious blue of the Renaissance, and
patrons sometimes specified that it be used in paintings they
commissioned. The contract for the Madone des Harpies by Andrea del
Sarto (1514)
required that the robe of the Virgin Mary be coloured with
ultramarine costing "at least five good florins an ounce."[30]
Good ultramarine was more expensive than gold; in 1508 the
German painter Albrecht Drer
reported in a letter that he had paid twelve ducats- the
equivalent of forty-one grams of gold - for just thirty grams of
ultramarine.[31]
Often painters or clients saved money by using less expensive
blues, such as azurite smalt, or pigments made with indigo, but
this sometimes caused problems. Pigments made from azurite were
less expensive, but
tended to turn dark and green with time. An example is the robe
of the Virgin Mary in The Madonna Enthroned with Saints by Raphael
in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Virgin Mary's azurite
blue
robe has degraded into a greenish-black.[32]
The introduction of oil painting changed the way colours looked
and how they were used. Ultramarine pigment, for instance, was much
darker when used in oil painting than when used in tempera
painting, in
frescoes. To balance their colours, Renaissance artists like
Raphael added white to lighten the ultramarine. The sombre dark
blue robe of the Virgin Mary became a brilliant sky blue.[33]
Titian created his rich blues by using many thin glazes of paint
of different blues and violets which allowed the light to pass
through, which made a complex and luminous colour, like stained
glass. He also used layers of finely ground or
coarsely ground ultramarine, which gave subtle variations to the
blue.[34]
l
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Giotto was one of the first Italian Renaissance painters to use
ultramarine, here in the murals of the Arena Chapel in Padua (circa
1305).
l
Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, the robes of the Virgin
Mary were painted with ultramarine. This is The Virgin of Humility
by Fra Angelico (about 1430). Blue fills the picture.
l
In In the Virgin of the Meadow (1506), Raphael used white to
soften the ultramarine blue of Virgin Mary's robes to balance the
red and blue, and to harmonize with the rest of the picture.
l
Giovanni Bellini was the master of the rich and luminous blue,
which almost seemed to glow. This Madonna is from 1480.
l
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Titian used an ultramarine sky and robes to give depth and
brilliance to Bacchus and Ariadne (15201523)
l
In this painting of The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
an early work by Raphael in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
blue cloak of the Virgin Mary has turned a green-black. It was
painted with less-expensive
azurite.
l
Glazed Terracotta of The Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, from
the workshop of Andrea della Robbia (1483)
l
The Trs Riches Heures du Duc de Berry was the most important
illuminated manuscript of the 15th century. The blue was the
extravagantly expensive ultramarine, whose fine grains gave it its
brilliant colour. It shows the Duc Du Berry himself seated at the
lower right. His costume shows that blue had become a colour for
the dress of the nobility, not just of peasants.
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Blue and white porcelain
In about the 9th century, Chinese artisans abandoned the Han
blue colour they had used for centuries, and began to use cobalt
blue, made with cobalt salts of alumina, to manufacture fine blue
and white porcelain,
The plates and vases were shaped, dried, the paint applied with
a brush, covered with a clear glaze, then fired at a high
temperature. Beginning in the 14th century, this type of porcelain
was exported in large
quantity to Europe where it inspired a whole style of art,
called Chinoiserie. European courts tried for many years to imitate
Chinese blue and white porcelain, but only succeeded in the 18th
century after a
missionary brought the secret back from China.
Other famous white and blue patterns appeared in Delft, Meissen,
Staffordshire, and Saint Petersburg, Russia.
l
Chinese blue and white porcelain from about 1335, made in
Jingdezhen, the porcelain centre of China. Exported to Europe, this
porcelain launched the style of Chinoiserie.
l
A soft-paste porcelain vase made in Rouen, France, at the end of
the 17th century, imitating Chinese blue and white.
l
Eighteenth century blue and white pottery from Delft, in the
Netherlands.
l
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Russian porcelain of the cobalt net pattern, made with cobalt
blue pigment. The Imperial Porcelain Factory in Saint Petersburg
was founded in 1744. This pattern, first produced in 1949, was
copied after a design made for
Catherine the Great.
The war of the blues indigo versus woad
While blue was an expensive and prestigious colour in European
painting, it became a common colour for clothing during the
Renaissance. The rise of the colour blue in fashion in the 12th and
13th centuries led to
the creation of a thriving blue dye industry in several European
cities, notably Amiens, Toulouse and Erfurt. They made a dye called
pastel from woad, a plant common in Europe, which had been used to
make blue
dye by the Celts and German tribes. Blue became a colour worn by
domestics and artisans, not just nobles. In 1570, when Pope Pius V
listed the colours that could be used for ecclesiastical dress and
for altar
decoration, he excluded blue, because he considered it too
common.[35]
The process of making blue with woad was particularly long and
noxious- it involved soaking the leaves of the plant for from three
days to a week in human urine, ideally urine from men who had been
drinking a
great deal of alcohol, which was said to improve the colour. The
fabric was then soaked for a day in the urine, then put out in the
sun, where as it dried it turned blue.[35]
The pastel industry was threatened in the 15th century by the
arrival from India of new blue dye, indigo, made from a shrub
widely grown in Asia. Indigo blue had the same chemical composition
as woad, but it was more concentrated and produced a richer and
more stable blue. In 1498, Vasco de Gama opened a trade route to
import indigo from India to Europe. In India, the indigo leaves
were soaked in water, fermented,
pressed into cakes, dried into bricks, then carried to the ports
London, Marseille, Genoa and Bruges. Later, in the 17th century,
the British, Spanish and Dutch established indigo plantations in
Jamaica, South
Carolina, the Virgin Islands and South America, and began to
import American indigo to Europe.
The countries with large and prosperous pastel industries tried
to block the use of indigo. The German government outlawed the use
of indigo in 1577, describing it as a "pernicious, deceitful and
corrosive
substance, the Devil's dye."[36][37]
In France, Henry IV, in an edict of 1609, forbade under pain of
death the use of "the false and pernicious Indian drug".[38]
It was forbidden in England until 1611, when British
traders established their own indigo industry in India and began
to import it into Europe.[39]
The efforts to block indigo were in vain; the quality of indigo
blue was too high and the price too low for pastel made from woad
to compete. In 1737 both the French and German governments finally
allowed the
use of indigo. This ruined the dye industries in Toulouse and
the other cities that produced pastel, but created a thriving new
indigo commerce to seaports such as Bordeaux, Nantes and
Marseille.[40]
Another war of the blues took place at the end of the 19th
century, between indigo and the new synthetic indigo, first
discovered in 1868 by the German chemist Johann Friedrich Wilhelm
Adolf von Baeyer. The
German chemical firm BASF put the new dye on the market in 1897,
in direct competition with the British-run indigo industry in
India, which produced most of the world's indigo. In 1897 Britain
sold ten thousand
tons of natural indigo on the world market, while BASF sold six
hundred tons of synthetic indigo. The British industry cut prices
and reduced the salaries of its workers, but it was unable to
compete; the synthetic
indigo was more pure, made a more lasting blue, and was not
dependent upon good or bad harvests. In 1911, India sold only 660
tons of natural indigo, while BASF sold 22,000 tons of synthetic
indigo.
Not long after the battle between natural and synthetic indigo,
chemists discovered a new synthetic blue dye, called indanthrene,
which made a blue which did not fade. By the 1950s almost all
fabrics, including
blue jeans, were dyed with the new synthetic dye. In 1970, BASF
stopped making synthetic indigo, and switched to newer synthetic
blues.[39]
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Isatis tinctoria, or woad, was the main source of blue dye in
Europe from ancient times until the arrival of indigo from Asia and
America. It was processed into a paste called pastel.
l
A Dutch tapestry from 1495 to 1505. The blue colour comes from
woad.
l
Indigofera tinctoria, a tropical shrub, is the main source of
indigo dye. The chemical composition of indigo dye is the same as
that of woad, but the colour is more intense.
l
Cakes of indigo. The leaf has been soaked in water, fermented,
mixed with lye or another base, then pressed into cakes and dried,
ready for export.
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A woad mill in Thuringia, in Germany, in 1752. The woad industry
was already on its way to extinction, unable to compete with indigo
blue.
The blue Uniform
In the 17th century, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg,
was one of the first rulers to give his army blue uniforms. The
reasons were economic; the German states were trying to protect
their pastel dye
industry against competition from imported indigo dye. When
Brandenburg became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, the uniform
colour was adopted by the Prussian army. Most German soldiers wore
dark blue
uniforms until the First World War, with the exception of the
Bavarians, who wore light blue.[41]
Thanks in part to the availability of indigo dye, the 18th
century saw the widespread use of blue military uniforms. Prior to
1748, British naval officers simply wore upper-class civilian
clothing and wigs. In 1748,
the British uniform for naval officers was officially
established as an embroidered coat of the colour then called marine
blue, now known as navy blue.[42]
When the Continental Navy of the United States was created in
1775, it largely copied the British uniform and colour.
In the late 18th century, the blue uniform became a symbol of
liberty and revolution. In October 1774, even before the United
States declared its independence, George Mason and one hundred
Virginia neighbours
of George Washington organised a voluntary militia unit (the
Fairfax County Independent Company of Volunteers) and elected
Washington the honorary commander. For their uniforms they chose
blue and buff,
the colours of the Whig Party, the opposition party in England,
whose policies were supported by George Washington and many other
patriots in the American colonies.[43][44]
When the Continental Army was established in 1775 at the
outbreak of the American Revolution, the first Continental Congress
declared that the official uniform colour would be brown, but this
was not popular with many militias, whose officers were already
wearing blue. In 1778 the Congress asked George Washington to
design a new uniform, and in 1779 Washington made the official
colour of all uniforms blue and
buff. Blue continued to be the colour of the field uniform of
the U.S. Army until 1902, and is still the colour of the dress
uniform.[45]
In France, the Gardes Franaises, the elite regiment which
protected Louis XVI, wore dark blue uniforms with red trim. In
1789, the soldiers gradually changed their allegiance from the King
to the people, and they
played a leading role in the storming of the Bastille. After the
fall of Bastille, a new armed force, the Garde Nationale, was
formed under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had
served with George
Washington in America. Lafayette gave the Garde Nationale dark
blue uniforms similar to those of the Continental Army. Blue became
the colour of the Revolutionary armies, opposed to the white
uniforms of the
Royalists and the Austrians.[46]
Napoleon Bonaparte abandoned many of the doctrines of the French
Revolution but he kept blue as the uniform colour for his army,
although he had great difficulty obtaining the blue dye, since the
British
controlled the seas and blocked the importation of indigo to
France. Napoleon was forced to dye uniforms with woad, which had an
inferior blue colour.[47]
The French army wore a dark blue uniform coat with red trousers
until 1915, when it was found to be a too visible target on the
battlefields of World War I. It was replaced with uniforms of a
light blue-grey colour called horizon blue.
Blue was the colour of liberty and revolution in the 18th
century, but in the 19th it increasingly became the colour of
government authority, the uniform colour of policemen and other
public servants. It was
considered serious and authoritative, without being menacing. In
1829, when Robert Peel created the first London Metropolitan
Police, he made the colour of the uniform jacket a dark, almost
black blue, to make the policemen look different from soldiers, who
until then had patrolled the streets. The traditional blue jacket
with silver buttons of the London "bobbie" was not abandoned until
the mid-1990s, when it was
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replaced by a light blue shirt and a jumper or sweater of the
colour officially known as NATO blue.[48]
The New York City Police Department, modelled after the London
Metropolitan Police, was created in 1844, and in 1853, they were
officially given a navy blue uniform, the colour they wear
today.[49]
l
Elector Frederic William of Brandenburg gave his soldiers blue
uniforms (engraving from 1698). When Brandenburg became the Kingdom
of Prussia in 1701, blue became the uniform colour of the Prussian
Army.
l
Uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy (1777). Marine blue
became the official colour of the Royal Navy uniform coat in
1748.
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George Washington chose blue and buff as the colours of the
Continental Army uniform. They were the colours of the English Whig
Party, which Washington admired.
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The Marquis de Lafayette in the uniform of the Garde Nationale
during the French Revolution (1790).
l
The cadets of the Ecole Spciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, the
French military academy, still wear the blue and red uniform of the
French army before 1915.
l
In 1853, New York policemen and firemen were officially
outfitted in navy blue uniforms.
l
Metropolitan Police officers in Soho, London (2007).
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New York City police officers on Times Square (2010).
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Chicago policeman in blue on a Segway PT (2005)
The search for the perfect blue
During the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists in Europe tried to
discover a way to create synthetic blue pigments, avoiding the
expense of importing and grinding lapis lazuli, azurite and other
minerals. The
Egyptians had created a synthetic colour, Egyptian blue, three
thousand years BC, but the formula had been lost. The Chinese had
also created synthetic pigments, but the formula was not known in
the west.
In 1709, a German druggist and pigment maker named Diesbach
accidentally discovered a new blue while experimenting with
potassium and iron sulphides. The new colour was first called
Berlin blue, but later
became known as Prussian blue. By 1710 it was being used by the
French painter Antoine Watteau, and later his successor Nicolas
Lancret. It became immensely popular for the manufacture of
wallpaper, and in
the 19th century was widely used by French impressionist
painters.[50]
Beginning in 1820s, Prussian blue was imported into Japan
through the port of Nagasaki. It was called bero-ai, or Berlin
Blue, and it became popular because it did not fade like
traditional Japanese blue pigment,
ai-gami, made from the dayflower. Prussian blue was used by both
Hokusai, in his famous wave paintings, and Hiroshige.[51]
In 1824, the Societ pour l'Encouragement d'Industrie in France
offered a prize for the invention of an artificial ultramarine
which could rival the natural colour made from lapis lazuli. The
prize was won in 1826 by
a chemist named Jean Baptiste Guimet, but he refused to reveal
the formula of his colour. In 1828, another scientist, Christian
Gmelin then a professor of chemistry in Tbingen, found the process
and published his
formula. This was the beginning of new industry to manufacture
artificial ultramarine, which eventually almost completely replaced
the natural product.[52]
In 1878, a German chemist named a. Von Baeyer discovered a
synthetic substitute for indigotine, the active ingredient of
indigo. This product gradually replaced natural indigo, and after
the end of the First World
War, it brought an end to the trade of indigo from the East and
West Indies.
In 1901, a new synthetic blue dye, called Indanthrone blue, was
invented, which had even greater resistance to fading during
washing or in the sun. This dye gradually replaced artificial
indigo, whose production
ceased in about 1970. Today almost all blue clothing is dyed
with an indanthrone blue.[53]
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The 19th-century Japanese woodblock artist, Hokusai used
Prussian blue, a synthetic colour imported from Europe, in his wave
paintings.
l
A synthetic indigo dye factory in Germany in 1890. The
manufacture of this dye ended the trade in indigo from America and
India that had begun in the 15th century.
The Impressionist painters
The invention of new synthetic pigments in the 18th and 19th
centuries considerably brightened and expanded the palette of
painters. J.M.W. Turner experimented with the new cobalt blue, and
of the twenty
colours most used by the Impressionists, twelve were new and
synthetic colours, including cobalt blue, ultramarine and cerulean
blue.[54]
Another important influence on painting in the 19th century was
the theory of complementary colours, developed by the French
chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul in 1828 and published in 1839. He
demonstrated
that placing complementary colours, such as blue and
yellow-orange or ultramarine and yellow, next to each other
heightened the intensity of each colour "to the apogee of their
tonality."[55]
In 1879 an American
physicist, Ogden Rood, published a book charting the
complementary colours of each colour in the spectrum.[56]
This principle of painting was used by Claude Monet in his
Impression Sunrise Fog (1872), where he put a vivid blue next to a
bright orange sun, (1872) and in Rgate Argenteuil (1872), where he
painted an orange sun against blue water. The colours brighten each
other. Renoir used the same contrast of
cobalt blue water and an orange sun in Canotage sur la Seine
(18791880). Both Monet and Renoir liked to use pure colours,
without any blending.[54]
Monet and the impressionists were among the first to observe
that shadows were full of colour. In his La Gare Saint-Lazare, the
grey smoke, vapour and dark shadows are actually composed of
mixtures of bright
pigment, including cobalt blue, cerulean blue, synthetic
ultramarine, emerald green, Guillet green, chrome yellow, vermilion
and ecarlate red.[57]
Blue was a favourite colour of the impressionist painters, who
used it not just to depict nature but to create moods, feelings and
atmospheres. Cobalt blue, a pigment of cobalt oxide-aluminium
oxide, was a favourite of Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh. It
was similar to smalt, a pigment used for centuries to make blue
glass, but it was much improved by the French chemist Louis Jacques
Thnard, who introduced it in 1802. It was very stable but extremely
expensive. Van Gogh wrote to
his brother Theo, "'Cobalt [blue] is a divine colour and there
is nothing so beautiful for putting atmosphere around things
..."[58]
Van Gogh described to his brother Theo how he composed a sky:
"The dark blue sky is spotted with clouds of an even darker blue
than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a
lighter blue, like the
bluish white of the Milky Way ... the sea was very dark
ultramarine, the shore a sort of violet and of light red as I see
it, and on the dunes, a few bushes of prussian blue."[59]
l
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Claude Monet used several recently invented colours in his Gare
Saint-Lazare (1877). He used cobalt blue, invented in 1807,
cerulean blue invented in 1860, and French ultramarine, first made
in 1828.
l
In Rgate Argenteuil (1872), Monet used two complementary colours
together blue and orange to brighten the effect of both
colours.
l
Umbrellas, by Pierre Auguste-Renoir. (1881 and 1885). Renoir
used cobalt blue for right side of the picture, but used the new
synthetic ultramarine introduced in the 1870s, when he added two
figures to left of the picture a few years later.
l
In Vincent van Gogh's Irises, the blue irises are placed against
their complementary colour, yellow-orange.
l
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Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888). Blue used to
create a mood or atmosphere. A cobalt blue sky, and cobalt or
ultramarine water.
l
Wheatfield under clouded sky (July 1890), One of the last
paintings by Vincent van Gogh, He wrote of cobalt blue, "there is
nothing so beautiful for putting atmosphere around things."
The blue suit
Blue had first become the high fashion colour of the wealthy and
powerful in Europe in the 13th century, when it was worn by Louis
IX of France, better known as Saint Louis (1214-1270). Wearing blue
implied
dignity and wealth, and blue clothing was restricted to the
nobility.[60]
However, blue was replaced by black as the power colour in the
14th century, when European princes, and then merchants and
bankers, wanted to show their seriousness, dignity and devoutness
(see Black).
Blue gradually returned to court fashion in the 17th century, as
part of a palette of peacock-bright colours shown off in extremely
elaborate costumes. The modern blue business suit has its roots in
England in the
middle of the 17th century. Following the London plague of 1665
and the London fire of 1666, King Charles II of England ordered
that his courtiers wear simple coats, waistcoats and breeches, and
the palette of
colours became blue, grey, white and buff. Widely imitated, this
style of men's fashion became almost a uniform of the London
merchant class and the English country gentleman.[61]
During the American Revolution, the leader of the Whig Party in
England, Charles James Fox, wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat and
breeches, the colours of the Whig Party and of the uniform of
George
Washington, whose principles he supported. The men's suit
followed the basic form of the military uniforms of the time,
particularly the uniforms of the cavalry.[61]
In the early 19th century, during the Regency of the future King
George IV, the blue suit was revolutionized by a courtier named
George Beau Brummel. Brummel created a suit that closely fitted the
human form.
The new style had a long tail coat cut to fit the body and long
tight trousers to replace the knee-length breeches and stockings of
the previous century. He used plain colours, such as blue and grey,
to concentrate
attention on the form of the body, not the clothes. Brummel
observed, "If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not
well dressed."[62]
This fashion was adopted by the Prince Regent, then by London
society and the upper classes. Originally the coat and trousers
were different colours, but in the 19th century the suit of a
single colour became fashionable. By the late 19th century the
black suit had become the
uniform of businessmen in England and America. In the 20th
century, the black suit was largely replaced by the dark blue or
grey suit.[61]
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King Louis IX of France (on the right, with Pope Innocent) was
the first European king to wear blue. It quickly became the colour
of the nobles and wealthy.
l
Joseph Leeson, later 1st Earl of Milltown, in the typical dress
of the English country gentleman in the 1730s.
l
Charles James Fox, a leader of the Whig Party in England, wore a
blue suit in Parliament in support of George Washington and the
American Revolution. Portrait by Joshua Reynolds (1782).
l
Beau Brummel introduced the ancestor of the modern blue suit,
shaped to the body, with a coat, long trousers, waistcoat, white
shirt and elaborate cravat (1805).
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Man's suit, 1826. Dark blue suits were still rare; this one is
blue-green or teal.
l
Man's blue suit in the 1870s, Paris. Painting by Caillebotte. In
the second half of the 19th century the monochrome suit had become
the fashion, but most suits were black.
l
President John Kennedy popularised the blue two-button business
suit, less formal than the suits of his predecessors. (1961)
l
In the 21st century, the dark blue business suit is the most
common style worn by world leaders, seen here at the 2011 G-20
Summit in Cannes, France.
In the 20th and 21st century
At the beginning of the 20th century, many artists recognised
the emotional power of blue, and made it the central element of
paintings. During his Blue Period (19011904) Pablo Picasso used
blue and green, with hardly any warm colours, to create a
melancholy mood. In Russia, the symbolist painter Pavel Kuznetsov
and the Blue Rose art group (19061908) used blue to create a
fantastic and exotic atmosphere. In
Germany, Wassily Kandinsky and other Russian migrs formed the
art group called Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), and used blue
to symbolise spirituality and eternity.[63] Henri Matisse used
intense blues to
express the emotions he wanted viewers to feel. Matisse wrote,
"A certain blue penetrates your soul."[64]
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In the art of the second half of the 20th century, painters of
the abstract expressionist movement began to use blue and other
colours in pure form, without any attempt to represent anything, to
inspire ideas and
emotions. Painter Mark Rothko observed that colour was "only an
instrument;" his interest was "in expressing human emotions
tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."[65]
In fashion, blue, particularly dark blue, was seen as a colour
which was serious but not grim. In the mid-20th century, blue
passed black as the most common colour of men's business suits, the
costume usually
worn by political and business leaders. Public opinion polls in
the United States and Europe showed that blue was the favourite
colour of over fifty per cent of respondents. Green was far behind
with twenty per
cent, while white and red received about eight per cent
each.[66]
In 1873 a German immigrant in San Francisco, Levi Strauss,
invented a sturdy kind of work trousers, made of denim fabric and
coloured with indigo dye, called blue jeans. In 1935, they were
raised to the level of high fashion by Vogue magazine. Beginning in
the 1950s, they became an essential part of uniform of young people
in the United States, Europe, and around the world.
Blue was also seen as a colour which was authoritative without
being threatening. Following the Second World War, blue was adopted
as the colour of important international organisations, including
the United
Nations, the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the European Union, and
NATO. United Nations peacekeepers wear blue helmets to stress their
peacekeeping role. Blue is used by the NATO Military Symbols for
Land
Based Systems to denote friendly forces, hence the term "blue on
blue" for friendly fire, and Blue Force Tracking for location of
friendly units. The People's Liberation Army of China (formerly
known as the "Red
Army") uses the term "Blue Army" to refer to hostile forces
during exercises.[67]
The 20th century saw the invention of new ways of creating blue,
such as chemiluminescence, making blue light through a chemical
reaction.
In the 20th century, it also became possible to own your own
colour of blue. The French artist Yves Klein, with the help of a
French paint dealer, created a specific blue called International
Klein blue, which he
patented. It was made of ultramarine combined with a resin
called Rhodopa, which gave it a particularly brilliant colour. The
baseball team the Los Angeles Dodgers developed its own blue,
called Dodger blue, and
several American universities invented new blues for their
colours.
With the dawn of the World Wide Web, blue has become the
standard colour for hyperlinks in graphic browsers (though in most
browsers links turn purple if you visit their target), to make
their presence within text obvious to readers.
l
During his Blue Period, Pablo Picasso used blue as the colour of
melancholy.
l
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The Russian avant-garde painter Pavel Kuznetsov and his group,
the Blue Rose, used blue to symbolise fantasy and exoticism. This
is In the Steppe- Mirage (1911).
l
The Blue Rider (1903), by Wassily Kandinsky, For Kandinsky, blue
was the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it
awakened human desire for the eternal.[63]
l
The Conversation (19081912) by Henri Matisse used blue to
express the emotions he wanted the viewer to feel.
l
Blue jeans, made of denim coloured with indigo dye, patented by
Levi Strauss in 1873, became an essential part of the wardrobe of
young people beginning in the 1950s.
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Blue is the colour of United Nations peacekeepers, known as Blue
Helmets. These soldiers are patrolling the border between Ethiopia
and Eritrea.
l
Vivid blues can be created by chemical reactions, called
chemiluminescence. This is luminol, a chemical used in crime scene
investigations. Luminol glows blue when it contacts even a tiny
trace of blood.
l
Blue neon lighting, first used in commercial advertising, is now
used in works of art. This is Zwei Pferde fr Mnster (Two horses for
Mnster), a neon sculpture by Stephan Huber (2002), in Munster,
Germany.
In science and industryPigments and dyes
Blue pigments were made from minerals, especially lapis lazuli
and azurite (Cu
3(CO
3)
2(OH)
2). These minerals were crushed, ground into powder, and then
mixed with a quick-drying binding agent, such as egg yolk (tempera
painting); or with a slow-drying oil, such as linseed oil, for oil
painting. To make
blue stained glass, cobalt blue (cobalt(II) aluminate: CoAl
2O
4)pigment was mixed with the glass. Other common blue pigments
made from minerals are ultramarine (Na8-10Al
6Si
6O
24S2-4), cerulean blue (primarily cobalt (II) stanate: Co
2SnO
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4), and Prussian blue (milori blue: primarily Fe
7(CN)
18).
Natural dyes to colour cloth and tapestries were made from
plants. Woad and true indigo were used to produce indigo dye used
to colour fabrics blue or indigo. Since the 18th century, natural
blue dyes have largely
been replaced by synthetic dyes.
l
Lapis lazuli, mined in Afghanistan for more than three thousand
years, was used for jewellery and ornaments, and later was crushed
and powdered and used as a pigment. The more it was ground, the
lighter the blue colour became.
l
Azurite, common in Europe and Asia, is produced by the
weathering of copper ore deposits. It was crushed and powdered and
used as a pigment from ancient times,
l
Natural ultramarine, made by grinding and purifying lapis
lazuli, was the finest available blue pigment in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance. It was extremely expensive, and in Italian
Renaissance art, it was often
reserved the robes of the Virgin Mary.
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Egyptian blue, the first artificial pigment, created in the
third millennium BC in Ancient Egypt by grinding sand, copper and
natron, and then heating them. It was often used in tomb paintings
and funereal objects to protect the dead in their afterlife.
l
Ground azurite was often in Renaissance used as a substitute for
the much more expensive lapis lazuli. It made a rich blue, but was
unstable and could turn dark green over time.
l
Cerulean was created with copper and cobalt oxide, and used to
make a sky blue colour. Like azurite, it could fade or turn
green.
l
Cobalt blue. Cobalt has been used for centuries to colour glass
and ceramics; it was used to make the deep blue stained glass
windows of Gothic cathedrals and Chinese porcelain beginning in the
T'ang Dynasty. In 1799 a
French chemist, Louis Jacques Thnard, made a synthetic cobalt
blue pigment which became immensely popular with painters.
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Prussian blue was one of the first synthetic colours, created in
Berlin in about 1706 as a substitute for lapis lazuli. It is also
the blue used in blueprints.
l
Indigo dye is made from the woad, Indigofera tinctoria, a plant
common in Asia and Africa but little known in Europe until the 15th
century. Its importation into Europe revolutionized the colour of
clothing. It also became the colour used in blue denim and jeans.
Nearly all indigo dye produced today is synthetic.
l
Synthetic ultramarine pigment, invented in 1826, has the same
chemical composition as natural ultramarine. It is more vivid than
natural ultramarine because the particles are smaller and more
uniform in size, and thus
distribute the light more evenly.
l
A new synthetic blue created in the 1930s is phthalocyanine, an
intense colour widely used for making blue ink, dye, and
pigment.
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Colour Frequency Wavelengthviolet 668789 THz 380450 nmblue
606668 THz 450495 nmgreen 526606 THz 495570 nmyellow 508526 THz
570590 nmorange 484508 THz 590620 nmred 400484 THz 620750 nm
Human eyes perceive blue when observing light which has a
wavelength between 450-495 nanometres. Blues with a higher
frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet,
while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength
gradually appear more green. Pure blue, in the middle, has a
wavelength of 470
nanometres.
Isaac Newton included blue as one of the seven colours in his
first description the visible spectrum, He chose seven colours
because that was the number of notes in the
musical scale, which he believed was related to the optical
spectrum. He included indigo, the hue between blue and violet, as
one of the separate colours, though today
it is usually considered a hue of blue.[68]
In painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the
three primary colours of pigments (red, yellow, blue), which can be
mixed to form a wide gamut of colours. Red and blue mixed together
form violet, blue and yellow together form green. Mixing all three
primary colours together produces a dark grey. From the
Renaissance
onwards, painters used this system to create their colours. (See
RYB colour system.)
The RYB model was used for colour printing by Jacob Christoph Le
Blon as early as 1725. Later, printers discovered that more
accurate colours could be created by using combinations of magenta,
cyan, yellow and black ink, put onto separate inked plates and then
overlaid one at a time onto paper. This method could produce almost
all the colours in the spectrum with reasonable accuracy.
In the 19th century the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell
found a new way of explaining colours, by the wavelength of their
light. He showed that white light could be created by combining
red, blue and
green light, and that virtually all colours could be made by
different combinations of these three colours. His idea, called
additive colour or the RGB colour model, is used today to create
colours on televisions and
computer screens. The screen is covered by tiny pixels, each
with three fluorescent elements for creating red, green and blue
light. If the red, blue and green elements all glow at once, the
pixel looks white. As the
screen is scanned from behind with electrons, each pixel creates
its own designated colour, composing a complete picture on the
screen.
l
Additive colour mixing. The projection of primary colour lights
on a screen shows secondary colours where two overlap; the
combination red, green, and blue each in full intensity makes
white.
l
Blue and orange pixels on an LCD television screen. Closeup of
the red, green and blue sub-pixels on left.
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On the HSV colour wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that
is, a colour corresponding to an equal mixture of red and green
light. On a colour wheel based on traditional colour theory (RYB)
where blue was
considered a primary colour, its complementary colour is
considered to be orange (based on the Munsell colour
wheel).[69]
Scientific natural standards
l Emission spectrum of Cu2+
l Electronic spectrum of aqua-ions Cu(H2O)
2+
6
Why the clear sky and the deep sea are seen as blue
Of the colours in the visible spectrum of light, blue has a very
short wavelength, while red has the longest wavelength. When
sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are
scattered more widely
by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our
eyes. This effect is called Rayleigh scattering, after Lord
Rayleigh, the British physicist who discovered it. It was confirmed
by Albert Einstein in
1911.[70]
Near sunrise and sunset, most of the light we see comes in
nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, so that the light's path
through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even
green light is scattered out,
leaving the sun rays and the clouds it illuminates red.
Therefore, when looking at the sunset and sunrise, you will see the
colour red more than any of the other colours.[71]
The sea is seen as blue for largely the same reason: the water
absorbs the longer wavelengths of red and reflects and scatters the
blue, which comes to the eye of the viewer. The colour of the sea
is also affected by
the colour of the sky, reflected by particles in the water; and
by algae and plant life in the water, which can make it look green;
or by sediment, which can make it look brown.[72]
Atmospheric perspective
The farther away an object is, the more blue it often appears to
the eye. For example, mountains in the distance often appear blue.
This is the effect of atmospheric perspective; the farther an
object is away from the viewer, the less contrast there is between
the object and its background colour, which is usually blue. In a
painting where different parts of the composition are blue, green
and red, the blue will appear to be more
distant, and the red closer to the viewer. The cooler a colour
is, the more distant it seems.[73]
l
Blue light is scattered more than other wavelengths by the gases
in the atmosphere, giving the Earth a blue halo when seen from
space.
l
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An example of aerial, or atmospheric perspective. Objects become
more blue and lighter in colour the farther they are from the
viewer, because of Rayleigh scattering.
l
Under the sea, red and other light with longer wavelengths is
absorbed, so white objects appear blue. The deeper you go, the
darker the blue becomes. In the open sea, only about one per cent
of light penetrates to a depth of 200 metres. (See underwater and
euphotic depth)
Blue eyes
Blue eyes actually contain no blue pigment. The colour is caused
by an effect called Rayleigh scattering, which also makes the sky
appear blue.
Blue eyes do not actually contain any blue pigment. Eye colour
is determined by two factors: the pigmentation of the eye's
iris[74][75]
and the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma
of the iris.[76]
In
humans, the pigmentation of the iris varies from light brown to
black. The appearance of blue, green, and hazel eyes results from
the Rayleigh scattering of light in the stroma, an optical effect
similar to that which
accounts for the blueness of the sky.[76][77]
The irises of the eyes of people with blue eyes contain less
dark melanin than those of people with brown eyes, which means that
they absorb less short-wavelength blue light, which is instead
reflected out to the viewer. Eye colour also varies depending on
the lighting conditions, especially for lighter-coloured eyes.
Blue eyes are most common in Ireland, the Baltic Sea area and
Northern Europe,[78]
and are also found in Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe.
Blue eyes are also found in parts of Western Asia, most notably
in
Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.[79]
In Estonia, 99% of people have blue eyes.[80][81]
In Denmark 30 years ago, only 8% of the population had brown
eyes, though through immigration, today that number is about
11%. In Germany, about 75% have blue eyes.[81]
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In the United States, as of 2006, one out of every six people,
or 16.6% of the total population, and 22.3% of the white
population, have blue eyes, compared with about half of Americans
born in 1900, and a third of
Americans born in 1950. Blue eyes are becoming less common among
American children. In the U.S., boys are 3-5 per cent more likely
to have blue eyes than girls.[78]
Lasers
Lasers emitting in the blue region of the spectrum became widely
available to the public in 2010 with the release of inexpensive
high-powered 445-447 nm Laser diode technology.[82]
Previously the blue wavelengths were accessible only through
DPSS which are comparatively expensive and inefficient, however
these technologies are still widely used by the scientific
community for applications including
Optogenetics, Raman spectroscopy, and Particle image
velocimetry, due to their superior beam quality.[83]
Blue Gas lasers are also still commonly used for Holography, DNA
sequencing, Optical pumping, and other scientific and medical
applications.
In naturel
Lactarius indigo, or the blue milk mushroom
l
Cornflower
l
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Myosotis, or Forget-me-not
l
Blue seeds of the Ravenala tree from Madagascar
l
The Morpho peleides butterfly. The blue is caused by
iridescence, the diffraction of light from millions of tiny scales
on the wings. The colour is intended to frighten predators.
l
River kingfisher
l
Linckia Blue starfish
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Blue sapphire, a gemstone of the mineral corundum. Trace amounts
of iron colour it blue; if there are traces of chromium instead, it
has a red tint and is called a ruby.
l
Dried crystals of copper sulphate
l
Blueberries
l
Dendrobates azureus, the poison dart frog from Brazil. Its skin
contains alkaloids which can paralyze or kill predators.
l
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Blue Jay
l
A blue whale, the largest known animal to have ever existed,
seen from above. The back is a pale blue grey.
Animals
l When an animal's coat is described as "blue", it usually
refers to a shade of grey that takes on a bluish tint, a diluted
variant of a pure black coat.[citation needed
] This designation is used for a variety of animals,
including dog coats, some rat coats, cat coats, some chicken
breeds, some horse coat colours and rabbit coat colours. Some
animals, such as giraffes and lizards, also have blue tongues.
In world culturel In the English language, blue often represents
the human emotion of sadness, for example, "He was feeling blue".l
In German, to be "blue" (blau sein) is to be drunk. This derives
from the ancient use of urine, particularly the urine of men who
had been drinking alcohol in dyeing cloth blue with woad or
indigo.[84] It may
also be in relation to rain, which is usually regarded as a
trigger of depressive emotions.[85]
l Blue can sometimes represent happiness and optimism in popular
songs,[86]
usually referring to blue skies.[87]
l In German, a person who regularly looks upon the world with a
blue eye is a person who is rather naive.[88]
l Blue is commonly used in the Western hemisphere to symbolise
boys, in contrast to pink used for girls. In the early 1900s, blue
was the colour for girls, since it had traditionally been the
colour of the Virgin
Mary in Western Art, while pink was for boys (as it was akin to
the colour red, considered a masculine colour).[89]
l In China, the colour blue is commonly associated with torment,
ghosts, and death.[90]
In a traditional Chinese opera, a character with a face powdered
blue is a villain.[91]
l In Turkey and Central Asia, blue is the colour of
mourning.[90]
l The men of the Tuareg people in North Africa wear a blue
turban called a tagelmust, which protects them from the sun and
wind-blown sand of the Sahara desert. It is coloured with indigo.
Instead of using
dye, which uses precious water, the tagelmust is coloured by
pounding it with powdered indigo. The blue colour transfers to the
skin, where it is seen as a sign of nobility and affluence.[92]
Early visitors called them the "Blue Men" of the Sahara.
[93]
l In the culture of the Hopi people of the American southwest,
blue symbolised the west, which was seen as the house of death. A
dream about a person carrying a blue feather was considered a very
bad omen.[90]
l In Thailand, blue is associated with Friday on the Thai solar
calendar. Anyone may wear blue on Fridays and anyone born on a
Friday may adopt blue as their colour.l
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A man of the Tuareg people of North Africa wears a tagelmust or
turban dyed with indigo. The indigo stains their skin blue; they
were known by early visitors as "the blue men" of the desert.
As a national and international colour
Various shades of blue are used as the national colours for many
nations.
l Azure, a light blue, is the national colour of Italy (from the
livery colour of the former reigning family, the House of Savoy).
National sport clubs are known as the Azzurri.l Blue and white are
the national colours of Scotland, Argentina, El Salvador, Finland,
Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Micronesia, Nicaragua and
Somalia, are the ancient national colours of Portugal and
are the colours of the United Nations.l Blue, white and yellow
are the national colours of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and
Uruguay.l Blue, white and green are the national colours of Sierra
Leone.
l Blue, white and black are the national colours of
Estonia.[94]
l Blue and yellow are the national colours of Barbados,
Kazakhstan, Palau, Sweden, and Ukraine.l Blue, yellow and green are
the national colours of Brazil, Gabon, and Rwanda.l Blue, yellow
and red are the national colours of Chad, Colombia, Ecuador,
Moldova, Romania, and Venezuela.l Blue and red are the national
colours of Haiti and Liechtenstein.l Blue, red and white are the
national colours of Cambodia, Costa Rica, Chile, Croatia, Cuba, the
Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, France, Iceland, North
Korea, Laos, Liberia, Luxembourg, Nepal, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico,
Russia, Samoa, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, the United
Kingdom, and the United States.l Blue, called St. Patrick's blue,
is a traditional colour of Ireland, and appears on the Arms of
Ireland.
l
The first flag of Portugal, used by Count Henry from 1095 till
1143.
l
The second flag of Portugal, used by King Afonso I from 1143
till 1185.
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l
The third flag of Portugal, used by King Sancho I from 1185 till
early 13th century.
l
The flag of Scotland, (with the Cross of Saint Andrew), used as
early as the 15th century, is one of the oldest blue national
flags.
l
The state flag of Sweden dates to 1562.
l
The flag of the Netherlands (1572) was the first tricolour
national flag. Orange, white and blue were the colours of the
Prince of Orange in his fight for independence from Spain.
l
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The Union Jack (1606), the first flag of the United Kingdom,
combined the white Cross of Saint Andrew of Scotland with the red
Cross of Saint George of England. The red Cross of Saint Patrick,
symbolising Ireland, was added in 1801. It was originally a naval
flag, and the background colour was dark navy blue.
l
The flag of Russia was created by Peter the Great in about 1664.
He rearranged the flag of the Netherlands, a country whose maritime
traditions he admired. It was replaced by a red flag during the
time of the Soviet Union,
but returned in 1991 after the fall of Communism.
l
The Grand Union Flag of 1775 was the first flag of the United
States, created the year before American independence.
l
In 1777 the Continental Congress specified that the field of the
new United States flag should be blue with a constellation of
thirteen stars representing the thirteen states, but did not
specify how they should be arranged. This
was one version from 1777.
l
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The flag of the city of Paris, the basis of the French
tricolour. Blue was the traditional colour of Saint Martin of
Tours, while red was the colour of Saint Denis.
l
The French tricolour (1794). White, representing either the
French nation (according to the version of the Marquis de
Lafayette) or the French monarchy was added to the red and blue of
the flag of Paris to make the tricolour.
l
The flag of Haiti was first flown in 1808.
l
The flag of Argentina was first raised in 1812.
l
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The flag of Greece was originally the naval ensign in 1822, then
the national flag in 1969.
l
Flag of Ukraine (1992 (originally in 1918)). Yellow on the
bottom represents golden wheat and blue on the top represents the
sky.
l
The flag of Israel, originally the flag of Zionist movement,
became the national flag in 1948. The blue stripes on white are
inspired by the Talit, or prayer shawl.[95]
l
The flag of Kosovo, which declared its independence in 2008,
features a gold map of Kosovo and six stars for the six ethnic
groups of Kosovo on a blue background. This design was selected
after an international
competition.
l
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The flag of South Sudan (2011), the newest recognised nation in
the world. The blue represents the Nile River, which flows through
the country.
l
The first flag of the United Nations (19451947). Blue was chosen
as a colour which symbolised peace. The first flag had the United
States (the host of the first UN Conference) in the central
position, but left out the southern portion of South America.
l
The U.N. flag was revised in October 1947 with an azimuthal
equidistant projection centred on the North Pole, which gave
Europe, the U.S. and Asia equal prominence, and included all of
South America.
l
The flag of Europe was created as the flag of the Council of
Europe in 1955, and became the flag of the European Economic
Community in 1985. The twelve stars do not symbolize any particular
nations - the COE actually
had fifteen members when the flag was created. Twelve was chosen
as a symbol of perfection and completeness.[96]
Politics
Main article: Political colour
l In the Byzantine Empire, the Blues and the Greens were the
most prominent political factions in the capital. They took their
names from the colours of the two most popular chariot racing teams
at the
Hippodrome of Constantinople.[97]
l The word blue was used in England the 17th century as a
disparaging reference to rigid moral codes and those who observed
them, particularly in blue-stocking, a reference to Oliver
Cromwell's supporters in the parliament of 1653.
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l In the middle of the 18th century, blue was the colour of Tory
party, then the opposition party in England, Scotland and Ireland,
which supported the British monarch and power of the landed
aristocracy, while the ruling Whigs had orange as their colour.
Flags of the two colours are seen over a polling station in the
series of prints by William Hogarth called Humours of an election,
made in 175455. Blue remains the colour of the Conservative Party
of the UK today.
l By the time of the American Revolution, The Tories were in
power and blue and buff had become the colours of the opposition
Whigs, They were the subject of a famous toast to Whig politicians
by Mrs. Crewe in 1784; "Buff and blue and all of you." They also
became the colours of the American patriots in the American
Revolution, who had strong Whig sympathies, and of the uniforms of
Continental Army
led by George Washington.[98]
l During the French Revolution and the revolt in the Vende that
followed, blue was the colour worn by the soldiers of the
Revolutionary government, while the royalists wore white.l The
Breton blues were members of a liberal, anti-clerical political
movement in Brittany in the late 19th century.l The blueshirts were
members of an extreme right paramilitary organization active in
Ireland during the 1930s.l Blue is associated with numerous
centre-right liberal political parties in Europe, including the
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (Netherlands), the
Reformist Movement and Open VLD (Belgium),
the Democratic Party (Luxembourg), Liberal Party (Denmark) and
Liberal People's Party (Sweden).l Blue is the colour of the
Conservative Party in Britain and Conservative Party of Canada.l In
the United States, television commentators use the term "blue
states" for those states which traditionally vote for the
Democratic Party in presidential elections, and "red states" for
those which vote
Republican.[99]
l In Qubec Province of Canada, the Blues are those who support
sovereignty for Quebec, as opposed to the Federalists. It is the
colour of the Parti qubcois and the Parti libral du Qubec.l Blue is
the colour of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico.l In Brazil,
blue states are the ones in which the Social Democratic Party has
the majority, in opposition to the Workers' Party, usually
represented by red.l A blue law is a type of law, typically found
in the United States and Canada, designed to enforce religious
standards, particularly the observance of Sunday as a day of
worship or rest, and a restriction on
Sunday shopping.
l The Blue House is the residence of the President of South
Korea.[100]
l
An illustration by William Hogarth from 1854 shows a polling
station with the blue flag of the Tory party and the orange flag of
the Whigs.
l
The blue necktie of British Prime Minister David Cameron
represents his Conservative Party.
l
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A smiling woman with a blue dress and blue flowered tattoos.
l
A map of the U.S. showing the blue states, which voted for the
Democratic candidate in all the last four Presidential elections,
and the red states, which voted for the Republican.
Religion
l Blue is associated in Christianity generally and Catholicism
in particular, with the Virgin Mary.[101][102][103]
l Blue in Hinduism: Many of the gods are depicted as having
blue-coloured skin, particularly those associated with Vishnu, who
is said to be the Preserver of the world and thus intimately
connected to water. Krishna and Ram, Vishnu's avatars, are usually
blue. Shiva, the Destroyer, is also depicted in light blue tones
and is called neela kantha, or blue-throated, for having swallowed
poison in an attempt to turn the
tide of a battle between the gods and demons in the gods'
favour. Blue is used to symbolically represent the fifth, throat
chakra (Vishuddha).[104]
l Blue in Judaism: In the Torah,[105]
the Israelites were commanded to put fringes, tzitzit, on the
corners of their garments, and to weave within these fringes a
"twisted thread of blue (tekhelet)".[106] In ancient days, this
blue thread was made from a dye extracted from a Mediterranean
snail called the hilazon. Maimonides claimed that this blue was the
colour of "the clear noonday sky"; Rashi, the colour of the
evening sky.[107]
According to several rabbinic sages, blue is the colour of God's
Glory.[108]
Staring at this colour aids in mediation, bringing us a glimpse
of the "pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity", which
is a likeness of the Throne of God.
[109] (The Hebrew word for glory.) Many items in the Mishkan,
the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, such as the menorah, many
of the vessels, and the Ark
of the Covenant, were covered with blue cloth when transported
from place to place.[110]
l
Blue stripes on a traditional Jewish tallit. The blue stripes
are also featured in the flag of Israel.
l
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Vishnu, the supreme god of Hinduism, is often portrayed as being
blue, or more precisely having skin the colour of rain-filled
clouds.
l
In Catholicism, blue became the traditional colour of the robes
of the Virgin Mary in the 13th century.
l
The Bhaisajyaguru, or "Medicine Master of Lapis Lazuli Light",
is the Buddha of healing and medicine in Mahayana Buddhism. He
traditionally holds a lapis lazuli jar of medicine.
l
In the Islamic World, blue and turquoise tile traditionally
decorates the facades and exteriors of mosques and other religious
buildings. This mosque is in Isfahan, Iran.
Gender
Blue was first used as a gender signifier just prior to World
War I (for either girls or boys), and first established as a male
gender signifier in the 1940s.[111]
Music
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l The blues is a popular musical form created in the United
States in the 19th century by African-American musicians, based on
African musical roots.[112]
It usually expresses sadness and melancholy.
l A blue note is a musical note sung or played at a slightly
lower pitch than the major scale for expressive purposes, giving it
a slightly melancholy sound. It is frequently used in jazz and the
blues.[113]
l Bluegrass is a sub-genre of American country music, born in
Kentucky and the mountains of Appalachia. It has its roots in the
traditional folk music of the Scottish, and Irish.[114]
Associations and sayings
l Surveys in Europe and the United States regularly find that
blue is the favourite colour of respondents, who associate it more
than any other colour with sympathy, harmony, faithfulness,
friendship and confidence. For example, a survey taken in Germany
and published in 2009 found that blue was the favourite colour of
46 per cent of male respondents and 44 per cent of women.
[4]
l True blue is an expression in the United States which means
faithful and loyal.l In Britain, a bride in a wedding is encouraged
to wear "Something old, something new, something borrowed,
something blue," as a sign of loyalty and faithfulness. A blue
sapphire engagement ring is also
considered a symbol of fidelity.[115]
l Blue is often associated with excellence, distinction and high
performance. The Queen of the United Kingdom and the Chancellor of
Germany often wear a blue sash at formal occasions. In the United
States, the blue ribbon is usually the highest award in expositions
and county fairs. The Blue Riband was a trophy and flag given to
the fastest transatlantic steamships in the 19th and 20th century.
A blue-ribbon panel is a group of top-level experts selected to
examine a subject.
l A blue chip stock is a stock in a company with a reputation
for quality and reliability in good times and bad. The term was
invented in the New York Stock Exchange in 1923 or 1924, and comes
from poker,
where the highest value chips are blue.[116]
l Someone with blue blood is a member of the nobility. The term
comes from the Spanish sangre azul, and is said to refer to the
pale skin and prominent blue veins of Spanish nobles.[117]
l Blue is also associated with labour and the working class. It
is the common colour of overalls blue jeans and other working
costumes. In the United States "blue collar" workers refers to
those who, in either skilled or unskilled jobs, work with their
hands and do not wear business suits ("White collar" workers).
l Blue is traditionally associated with the sea and the sky,
with infinity and distance. The uniforms of sailors are usually
dark blue, those of air forces lighter blue. The expression "The
wild blue yonder refers to the sky. On the first flight into space,
the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin told ground control, "The earth
is blue. How wonderful - it is amazing."
[118]
l Blue is associated with cold water taps which are
traditionally marked with blue.l Bluestocking was an unflattering
expression in the 18th century for upper-class women who cared
about culture and intellectual life and disregarded fashion. It
originally referred to men and women who wore
plain blue wool stockings instead of the black silk stockings
worn in society.[117]
l Blue is often associated with melancholy- having the
"blues".l
Madame Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV of France, wore
blue myosotis, or forget-me-not flowers in her hair and on her
gowns as a symbol of faithfulness to the King.
SportsMany sporting teams make blue their official colour, or
use it as detail on kit of a different colour. In addition, the
colour is present on the logos of many sports associations.
The blues of antiquity
l In the late Roman Empire, during the time of Caligula, Nero
and the emperors who followed, the Blues were a popular chariot
racing team which competed in the Circus Maximus in Rome against
the Greens,
the Reds and Whites.[97]
l In the Byzantine Empire, The Blues and Greens were the two
most popular chariot racing teams which competed in the Hippodrome
of Constantinople. Each was connected with a powerful political
faction,
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and disputes between the Green and Blue supporters often became
violent. After one competition in 532 AD, during the reign of the
Emperor Justinian, riots between the two factions broke out, during
which
the cathedral and much of the centre of Constantinople were
burned, and more than thirty thousand people were killed.[119]
(See Nika riots)
Association football
In international association football, blue is a common co