Henry Hemmendinger (April 1, 1915 – August 16, 2003) was an American color scientist.
Early career
Hemmendinger's work in color standardization and measurement established him as one of the world's preeminent experts in
color science Color science is the scientific study of color including lighting and optics; measurement of light and color; the physiology, psychophysics, and modeling of color vision; and color reproduction.
History
Organizations
* International Commi ...
. After graduating from Harvard and Princeton, Hemmendinger joined the U.S. Navy and worked in
submarine warfare research. During his service, he met his future business partner Hugh Davidson. After the war, both men worked in general physics at
General Aniline & Film The American IG Chemical Corporation, or American IG, for short, was an American holding company incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law in April 1929 and headquartered in New York City. It had stakes in General Aniline Works (GAW), ...
Corporation, where they became increasingly interested in
colorimetry
Colorimetry is "the science and technology used to quantify and describe physically the human color perception".
It is similar to spectrophotometry, but is distinguished by its interest in reducing spectra to the physical correlates of color ...
and
color theory. Their first contribution to the field was their development of the Automatic Tristimulus Integrator, the first device to enable rapid automatic measurement of
XYZ values of the color spectrum.
Development of color-matching computers
In 1952 Hemmendinger and Davidson left General Aniline & Film to form Davidson and Hemmendinger. Their first successful product was a colorant-mixture
analog computer
An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuous variation aspect of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities (''analog signals'') to model the problem being solved. In ...
, COMIC, introduced in 1958, the first automated color matching system. Hemmendinger also evaluated colors for the
Munsell Munsell may refer to:
* Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918), American painter, teacher of art, and the inventor of the Munsell color system
* Harvey M. Munsell, American soldier in the Civil War.
*Munsell Color Company
*Munsell color system
In c ...
books, and his contributions are still used as standards.
In 1967, Hemmendinger and Davidson developed COMIC II, a digital version of their earlier color matching computer. Shortly after this, their company was sold to Kollmorgen and combined with their Macbeth Instrument Development Laboratories. Hemmendinger left Kollmorgen in 1970 and formed the Hemmendinger Color Laboratory, a consulting firm specializing in colorimetric and spectrophotometric standards.
Contributions to the field
Hemmendinger received the Godlove Award from th
Inter-Society Color Councilfor his work,
[Brill, M.: "Hemmendinger receives Godlove award"'' Inter-Society Color Council News'' 364, December 1996] and frequently consulted with the
National Bureau of Standards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
. His companies were frequently the only U.S. supplier of calibrated color materials used to evaluate color measurement instruments.
Selected publications
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References
External links
* Th
Henry Hemmendinger papersare available at
Hagley Museum and Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hemmendinger, Henry
1915 births
Color scientists
2003 deaths
Harvard University alumni
Princeton University alumni