This book is the first treatise on colors ever published and the first European dictionary of color terms. Though it deals with colors primarily from a lexicographical point of view, it also contains philosophical considerations on color and insights into the pigments used by painters and craftspeople in their workshops.

Robert Boyle was a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and a pioneer of modern experimental scientific method. The text documents his experiments on the origins and changes of colors, including trials made with common materials, reflections on the causes of different skin colors, and experiences of unusual color vision among his acquaintances. Although the collection focuses mainly on chemical experiments, it includes some observations made with prisms.

This text documents Isaac Newton’s findings from his experiments passing light through prisms. It contains the first scientifically based color wheel.

"Werner's Nomenclature of Colours..." was the preeminent guide to color and its classification for artists, scientists, naturalists, and anthropologists in the 19th century, including Charles Darwin. The guide is considered a predecessor of contemporary color systems like Pantone.

Chemist and color theorist Michel Eugène Chevreul was appointed by the famous French carpet manufacturer, Gobelin, to improve problems related to the preparation of dyes. Chevreul quickly discovered that it was not the chemicals in the pigments that caused colors to look murky but optics. This treatise attempts to provide a comprehensive and systematic basis for seeing colors. It also outlines his groundbreaking theories on simultaneous contrasts, articulating concepts related to color juxtapositions and how colors affect each other.

First published in Japan in 1873, this was a required text for art students in the fourth grade. The work purportedly utilizes American educational materials and introduces the concepts of Isaac Newton on the color spectrum.