Pythagoras was pretty influential during his day, and our guy Newton was a big fan of his work. So, that explains the first dead genius and the rainbow thing, but maybe you’re wondering about the other dead genius and the number seven?Įnter, Pythagoras of Samos: a Greek philosopher and mathematician. That’s how he came to establish the color wheel and the seven colors of the rainbow. In 1665, Newton decided he would split up this spectrum of color (ahem, rainbows) into distinct colors so that it would be easier to talk about and understand. In fancy science terms, the visible spectrum of light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can see. We’ve all seen the colored light that reflects in the sky after rainstorms, known as the visible spectrum of light. He also created a formula for the three laws of motion. It all started with the colors of the rainbow and Sir Isaac Newton, an all-around genius and super cool guy who first discovered the concept of the visible spectrum of light. And you might be surprised by how strange and exciting the story is. We're self-proclaimed color experts at Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator), so we’re going to give you a quick history lesson on how the color wheel came to be.
