Louis Fehr: George Palmer, ca. 1820
George Palmer, also known as “George Giros de Gentilly named Palmer,” was an English dye chemist, color theorist, inventor, and soldier. According to his obituary, Palmer was born ca. 1746 on a ship to English Catholic parents. Due to the eighteenth-century restrictions on activities of English Catholics, Palmer lived a double life between England and France. Nothing is known about his early years. Circa 1775 he introduced a solution of tin as a new mordant for the dyeing of wool fabrics in Louviers, France, using the name Giros de Gentilly [1, 2].
28.1 Theory of Colours and Vision
In 1777, located in London, Palmer published the book Theory of Colours and Vision, a French edition of which was published in the same year in Paris, translated by Palmer’s friend Denis-Bernard Quatremère d’Isjonval, at the time active in the textile manufacturing facility Disjonval in Sedan, France, owned by his family [3, 4].
In 1781, J. H. Voigt of Gotha, Germany, editor of Magazin fuer das Neueste aus der Physik und Naturgeschichte (Journal for the latest physics and natural sciences news), describes meeting with Giros von Gentilly and the latter’s conjectures about color blindness [5]. In 1785, Palmer, living in Paris, had Lettre sur les moyens de produire, la nuit, une lumière pareille á celle du jour (Letter concerning the means of producing at night a light equal to daylight) published describing the modification of oil-lamp light with a blue glass mantel, a technology that became fashionable for a time [6]. In 1786, Palmer published Théorie de la lumière, applicable aux arts, et principalement á la peinture (Theory of light applicable to the arts, principally to painting [7]. Toward the end of that decade, likely as a result of the French Revolution, Palmer became a mercenary soldier in the Corps of Engineers, at different times for Sweden, Austria, and Russia, reaching the rank of major, as described in his obituary [8]. For a time in the early nineteenth century, he lived near Leipzig in Germany where he reported on four technical inventions, one of which being a fire-extinguishing powder, a demonstration of which was reported in a local newspaper. In 1811, Palmer moved to Copenhagen into retirement and died there destitute in 1826 [9].
Palmer made lasting contributions to the development of color science by being the first to propose that there are three different mechanisms in the human eye that account for color vision: “The superficies of the retina is compounded of particles [light sensors] of three different kinds, analogous to the three rays of light, and each of these particles is moved by its own ray” [3]. This statement has proved true in regard to the number of different daylight sensor types, the cones, in the human eye, if not in regard to the claim of three kinds of light. Thirty-five years later, a similar statement was made by the eminent physicist Thomas Young [10].
Voigt, in his report on Giros von Gentilly, describes him as having stated that color blindness arises if one or two of the three kinds of “particles” in the retina is inactive, a statement found to be valid [5]. In 1786, Palmer provided a hypothesis for the complementary nature of the successive contrast effect by stating that it is due to fatiguing of one or two of the light sensor types, an explanation that continues to be accepted as valid, as does his conjecture that the different kinds of sensor take different times to recover upon exposure to strong light.