The CIE 1931 color spacechromaticity diagram with wavelengths in nanometers. Note that the colors depicted depend on the color space of the device on which you are viewing the image.
Established in 1913 and based in Vienna, Austria, the International Commission on Illumination (usually known as the CIE for its French name Commission internationale de l'éclairage, but the English abbreviation is sometimes seen in older papers) is the international authority on light, illumination, color, and color spaces.
The CIE has seven divisions, each of which establishes technical committees to carry out its program under the supervision of the division's director:
Vision and Colour
Measurement of Light and Radiation
Interior Environment and Lighting Design
Lighting and Signalling for Transport
Exterior Lighting and Other Applications
Photobiology and Photochemistry
Image Technology
Milestones
Building on the Optical Society of America's Colorimetry Report in the August 1922 issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America and Review of Scientific Instruments, six years after the OSA's inception, the CIE convened its Eighth Session in 1931, with the intention of establishing an international agreement regarding colorimetric specifications and updating the recommendations made by the OSA based on the developments of the passing decade.[1] The meeting, which was held in Cambridge, United Kingdom, concluded with the formalization of the XYZ color space, standard illuminants A, B, and C. The inspirational 1922 report marked a shift in the treatment of color to a scientific one, defining color in the following terms:[2]
Color is the general name for all sensations arising from the activity of the retina of the eye and its attached nervous mechanisms, this activity being, in nearly every case in the normal individual, a specific response to radiant energy of certain wave-lengths and intensities.
—T.L. Troland, Report of O.S.A. Committee on Colorimetry for 1920-1921.
In 1976, the commission developed the CIELAB and CIELUV color spaces, which are widely-used today.
