Color systems date back to at least the 17th century, but in the 19th century, an ornithologist named Robert Ridgway took issue with some of the existing nomenclature of colors, according to Daniel Lewis, who authored The Feathery Tribe, a biography of Ridgway.
In his 1912 self-published work, titled Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, an expansion of his first color book of 1886, Ridgway wrote that “the nomenclature of colors remains vague and, for practical purposes, meaningless, thereby seriously impeding progress in almost every branch of industry and research.”
He decried the nondescriptive and befuddling names of popular colors, wrote Lewis, including “baby blue,” “London smoke,” “ashes of roses” and “elephant’s breath.”
Ridgway’s color dictionary, with over 1,000 colors, included hues that referenced birds, like “Jay Blue,” while others derived from fruits — “Apple Green” — or the natural environment, as in “Storm Gray.”
His color book “evolved into the Pantone color chart,” according to Lewis. “Ridgway’s Colors” are still used today by mycologists, philatelists and food colorists, according to Lewis’ 2012 book.
But his color mixing system was technically flawed, subject to the whims of the natural elements, and never became widely adopted.
An article in Hyperallergic, an online arts magazine, from 2016 cites a 1985 critique published by the Beta Beta Beta Biological Society: “Color Standards lacks precise descriptions of how to reproduce the colors. In addition to this problem, Ridgway chose some pigments that were not as permanent as he had hoped, but were affected by humidity, abrasion, and hue shift.”
Another edge Pantone has on its competitors is that it knows how to tell stories about color and arrange them in an accessible way.