Jamie Wong, on his Zero Wind blog:

Why do we perceive background-color: #9B51E0 as this particular purple?

This is one of those questions where I thought I’d known the answer for a long time, but as I inspected my understanding, I realized there were pretty significant gaps.

Through an exploration of electromagnetic radiation, optical biology, colorimetry, and display hardware, I hope to start filling in some of these gaps. If you want to skip ahead, here’s the lay of the land we’ll be covering […]

This is a fantastic and informative journey through light and colour — I found myself nodding along to the things I knew and being surprised by the rest. Do set aside at least 15 minutes to get through the whole piece without interruptions.

(via @khron)