Bradley color wheel
The Bradley color wheel was a line of educational tools developed by Milton Bradley, of the Milton Bradley Company (MB), in 1895 as part of his wider color teaching system. Although the color system was primarily created for education, it had a wide influence. A notable example being its usage by Smithsonian ornithologist Robert Ridgeway who, dissatisfied by contemporary color standards, incorporated the system into his own set of standards that would eventually evolve into Pantone.

The color wheel was designed to allow teachers to demonstrate how colors mixed and worked together. The wheel was based on the Maxwell Disk, a simple tool created by cutting a radial split in two or more colored disks and joining them. By doing so colors could be mixed by rotating the disks to show a different proportion of each color. When spun, the colors would then combine to form the average color mix. The tool added a crank to rotate the wheel, graduated markings along the circumference of the disks (allowing precise color measurement) and in the center added the shade of grey required to create the color.
Q1651497
Milton Bradley
PER
Q2150493
Milton Bradley Company
ORG
None
color teaching system
UNK
Q131626
Smithsonian
LOC
Q44703
ornithologist
Concept
Q940473
Robert Ridgeway
PER
Q2050040
Pantone
ORG
Q5148657
Maxwell Disk
UNK
Q85748662
Bradley color wheel
UNK
1895-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1895
DATE
founded by
field of work