In a recent Color Control Myths and Mysteries educational webinar, one of our attendees asked us where the name of the color Reflex Blue came from. We thought this was an excellent question.
If you’re in the printing industry, you’ve no doubt seen the Pantone Reflex Blue swatch. But Reflex Blue did not originate with Pantone. They basically adopted the name.
Reflex Blue was a color that was created by a company called Ault & Wiborg in the late 1800s out of Cincinnati, Ohio. They specialized in the manufacturing of printing inks, dry color dyes and pigments.
Levi Addison Ault was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1851. He followed a brother to Wisconsin and settled there. He first worked on a railroad and then as a bookkeeper. When his brother moved to Cincinnati, he again followed him. There he worked with lamp black, which is also called carbon black among other things. Lamp black is a kind of black soot created by incomplete combustion and was used in creating pigments. While working with lamp black, Ault came up with the idea to become an ink manufacturer. But he needed an investor.
In 1855, Frank Bestow Wiborg was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He moved to Cincinnati to attend college prep school. He worked as a newspaper peddler to pay his way through school. Afterwards, he went to work as a salesman for Ault, who was impressed by his techniques.
Eventually, the two men became friends and partners with Wiborg being able to provide Ault with the capital he needed to start the ink manufacturing company. In 1878, Ault & Wiborg was founded.
One of Ault & Wiborg’s creations was Reflex Blue. They also created the name of a color called “U.S. Reds” but that name for whatever reason was never adopted like Reflex Blue. The “Reflex” was just the name of the ink that was used to create the color.
So next time you see a swatch labeled Pantone Reflex Blue, remember that it originated from one man’s dream of becoming an ink manufacturer in the late 1800s in the Midwest.
I was the guy who asked the question. I have asked this question of many people over the years – grizzled old pressmen, Photoshop World instructors, former professors of mine, and even the quality control guy from a printing ink pigment manufacturer – and nobody has given such a satisfactory answer. The most amusing answer perhaps came from the pressman who told me that due to Reflex Blue’s tendency to burn out and produce inconsistent color on the press combined with it’s eternally slow dry time which often causes smearing and ghosting if slip sheets aren’t used, most pressmen have a “reflex” to throw job jackets (and other, heavier, implements) across the press room in anger when they see this color listed on said jackets. Thanks so much for writing this article!
Jason, thank you for your comment here and for your original question during our webinar! We had to go back and do some research ourselves so thanks for that too. It’s an interesting story and it’s funny how this name was adopted and carried on while others weren’t. I do like that pressman’s story! Thanks for sharing!
Hmmm … this leads one to believe that Reflex Blue is only encountered in the ink business. But this is not the case. It was used in automotive finishes in the 1940s and its bronzing behavior in printing inks documented in the 1930s. So I would assume that Reflex Blue was a dry pigment as well.
Danny, That’s a very good point. That’s certainly not the impression I wanted to make in this post. Reflex Blue wasn’t just used for ink even back in the Ault and Wiborg days. They also dealt with dry color dyes and pigments. I’m sure Reflex Blue was probably used. Thank you for pointing this out.
Thanks for the research. I used to work in the industry, on the presses and in prepress with LOTS of old timers. NOBODY ever knew the origin of the name
I have not seen this new pantone book everyone is upset about, but we always wondered why PMS 185 was out of sequence.
Roy,
Thanks for your comments. You just gave me a great idea for a blog post: How and why the Pantone books are organized the way they are!
– Shelby