Color by Cable

NEUTRAL FOUR STOP SIXTY TWO DEGREES STOP PURPLE DASH BLUE SIXTY SEVEN STOP TWENTY FOUR DEGREES STOP BLUE FIFTY EIGHT STOP FOURTEEN DEGREES

If a Detroit motormaker received a wire like this from Manhattan and if he were a client of Color Engineer Howard Ketcham, he would realize that he was not getting garbled code advice to buy raw materials but a sample of a new body color.

Last week Mr. Ketcham announced and demonstrated "Colorcable," his patented method of transmitting color from any where to anywhere in a matter of minutes. Confronted with a color sample at the transmitting end, the operator takes a number of variously colored disks, inserts them in a calibrated, electrically driven wheel. Whirling the wheel resolves the disks into one tone. Disks are added or subtracted until the color appearing on the wheel matches that of the sample. Then the number and color-designations of the disks are wired to the receiver, who has a disk-&-wheel set of his own. He inserts the proper disks in his wheel, spins it, sees the color. Mr. Ketcham claims that 300,000 colors may be transmitted. A dressmaker in Manhattan may see a new color ten minutes after it is shown in a Paris salon, instead of waiting days for a boat. Tall, dark Howard Ketcham, 33, began his color career in an advertising agency, joined the automotive paint division of du Pont de Nemours & Co.. reduced 13,000 body colors to the 600 listed in the Automotive Color Index. Sent around the world by du Pont to have a look at the color habits of other nations. Colorist Ketcham discovered that Mohammedans will not buy green products because green is their sacred color; that in Japan only the Son of Heaven can have a maroon automobile.

Pan American Airways has hired Ketcham to decorate the interiors of the Clippers now being built for the South American and Pacific runs. He is proceeding on the theory that certain colors are conducive to nausea, while others breed "confidence and cheer." Cheerful green is the keynote for furniture, sheets and blankets. Mr. Ketcham advises airlines not to serve coffee or mayonnaise, on the ground that yellow and coffee colors offend stomachs already quivering from rough air.

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