The effect was
noted in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. In the case of
various big liners, more than 500 feet long, no accurate range could be
made for shelling at from three to five miles--the usual shelling
distance--while at eight miles the vessels melted into the ocean-mists.
But the first trials of the system were conducted at Newport, in 1913,
in conjunction with Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting, of the submarine
flotilla. After a period experiments were continued at the Brooklyn Navy
Yard. In 1915 Commander J. O. Fisher, U.S.N., painted the periscope of
his submarine--the K-6--with the colors of the spectrum. Mr. Mackay got
in touch with this officer and explained the work he had done with
Lieutenant Whiting. Fisher, deeply interested, invited the painter to
deliver a series of lectures to the officers of the submarine flotilla
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
With the aid of a Maxwell disk--a wheel upon which colored cardboard is
placed and then revolved--he demonstrated the difference between paint
and light, as set forth in a book on the chemistry of color by the late
Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia. He showed, for example, that yellow and blue
in light make white, while yellow and blue in pigment make green. The
bird colored blue and yellow will be a dull gray at a distance of 100
feet, and will blend perfectly against the dull gray of a tree-trunk at,
perhaps, a less distance. The parrot of red, green, and violet plumage
turns gray at 100 feet or more, the eye at that distance losing the
ability to separate the three color-sensations.
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