As consumer markets recovered post-1945, clothing retailers started demanding greater colour accuracy from their suppliers. The problem for manufacturers was that the variability of natural daylight made visual colour assessment too haphazard to guarantee colour consistency.

The solution was an internationally agreed standard measure of daylight, and an illumination source that would emit light to exactly that standard.

The birth of D65
Reaching agreement on a standard was relatively easy. In 1963 a mean colour temperature of 6500 Kelvin was accepted as the International Standard of Daylight. It is now universally known as D65.

Developing lamp technology that could produce D65 accurately, consistently and continuously took longer.

The solution - a fluorescent lamp coated with a blend of seven rare earth phosphors - came in 1964 from Leslie Hubble, chairman of the British Colour Council and a renowned innovator at UK company Thorn Lighting.

‘Seeing in truth’
So successful was the world’s first reliable D65 source that Leslie Hubble founded his own company to produce D65 lamps and associated products.

(VeriVide - which broadly translates from Latin as ‘see in truth’ - was the name Leslie Hubble gave to his D65 colour assessment cabinets. VeriVide soon became a worldwide brand, leading to a company name change from Leslie Hubble Ltd to VeriVide Ltd in 2001.)

Supply chain transformation
Fifty years after its invention, VeriVide is still working on applications for the D65 light source, and has developed colour assessment technologies for every industry in which colour has significance. That’s a lot of industries!

For example, VeriVide’s DigiEye system makes it possible to share colour assessment data instantly throughout the supply chain. This greatly improves quality assurance and supplier relationships.

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VeriVide - Model DCAC 60 - Particulate Viewing Cabinets Brochure