Camouflage--American System of Low Visibility and the British Dazzle
System--Americans Worked Out Principles of Color in Light and Color in
Pigment--British Sought Merely to Confuse the Eye--British System
Applied to Some of Our Transports


While our naval vessels, that is to say war-ships, have adhered to the
lead-gray war paint, the Navy Department has not declined to follow the
lead of the merchant marine of this country and Great Britain in
applying the art of camouflage to some of its transports, notably to the
_Leviathan_, which, painted by an English camoufleur, Wilkinson, fairly
revels in color designed to confuse the eyes of those who would attack
her. A great deal has been written about land camouflage, but not so
much about the same art as practised on ships. Originally, the purpose
was the same--concealment and general low visibility--at least it was so
far as the Americans were concerned. The British, on the other hand,
employed camouflage with a view to distorting objects and fatiguing the
eye, thus seriously affecting range-finding. The British system was
known as the "dazzle system," and was opposed to the American idea of so
painting a vessel as to cause it to merge into its background.

The American camouflage is based on scientific principles which embody
so much in the way of chromatic paradox as to warrant setting forth
rather fully, even though at the present time, for good and sufficient
reasons relating to German methods of locating vessels, the Americans
have more or less abandoned their ideas of low visibility and taken up
with the dazzle idea.

A mural painter of New York, William Andrew Mackay, who had long
experimented in the chemistry of color (he is now a member of the staff