Telegraph stamps of Great Britain.

Until recently, only the Post Office telegraphs were well known.
This is changing but the printed information is still out of date.
I hope to gather further information and present it here.
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Colour.

Colour, and the perception of it, are complex subjects.
Simplistically, a colour can be made from a mixture of red, green and blue, but the precise spectrum of the red, green and blue may themselves.
be different depending on how they are produced. The phosphor on and old cathode ray tube, rare earths used in LEDs or dyes used in LCD displays, may all give acceptable results from the point of view of enjoying a movie,
but for someone that wants to be able to distinguish a normal shade stamp from a rare variety,
inaccuracy can be costly.
When scanning, the light source has a particular spectrum, and the sensors have their own spectrum. Everything between them filters the light according to their own spectrum.
The light in the room where viewing a stamp, as well as walls that the light reflects from, will all affect the percetion. Your eyes are not simple cameras but actively enhance differences between adjoining colours.
It's a minefield.
It would be easy to give up on trying to ensure that everyone sees a stamp in the 'correct' colour, but I can at least ensure that people understand that images on these pages
may not be in the correct colour, and the reasons for it.
The reasons come from many sources. Some are mine, I am aware that my scanner, a Canon Canoscan Lide 120 produces images that are slightly more red than images from other scanners.
Some images are from eBay or other sales venues, and have been deliberately 'adjusted' to enhance their sales appeal.
Described colours are another area of disagreement. The differences between say purple, violet, lavender and lilac appear to be very personal, but there also seems to be differences between British and American naming conventions.
Perhaps one day there will be standard scanners, monitor screens and printer pigments, chosen for accuracy rather than profit, but until then I can only acknowledge the problems and ensure
that others are aware of them.

There have been efforts in some areas to introduce standards. Monitors can have calibration features, though a correctly calibrated LCD screen is not going to look the same as a correctly calibrated LED screen.
There are colour charts produced by stamp catalogue companies like Stanley Gibbons, but they do not all agree with each other. I am sitting in front of my 5 monitors (the other failed recently),
so I am acutely aware that they do not all look the same.

There is the British Standard Colour, but as they say "The colours depicted on the chart are for guidance only. The displayed colour will depend on your monitor and browser."
There is Rapidtables, or Wikipedia that may be helpful, but most are trying to sell you something by offering pleasing colours, rather than helping to identify and specify a particular shade.
There is the Inter-Society Color Council (money up front), which appears to be more about promoting business rather than standards.

Then there is the Munsell system dating from 1913, and the similar, but more recent Methuen handbook of colour :

Methuen Handbook of Colour (Color)

Kornerup, Andreas; Wanscher, J.H.

Published by Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, 1963

ISBN 10: 0413334007
ISBN 13: 9780413334008

There is also an updated version of ISBN:0413334007, 3d edition. / introduced and revised by Don Pavey. Published/Created:London by E. Methuen in 1978 (in English and Danish).

This gives the possibility of searching for the closest colour match (under appropriate lighting), and specifying the colour as a code eg 4B3.
I'm told " Other philatelists have used it to define stamp shades eg the seahorse guy Kearsley." Unfortunately, like a lot of limited distribution books, it is hard/expensive to obtain
unless of course you live near a good library.

Comments, criticisms, information or suggestions are always welcome.

Please include the word 'Telegraphs' in the subject.

Last updated 7th. March 2023

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Permission is hereby granted to copy material for which the copyright is owned by myself, on condition that any data is not altered and this website is given credit.