1. Eyes : The compound eye ; The human eye : The optical system; The photoreceptors; The functioning of nerve cells; The neural network of the eye; The visual cortex

2. The evolution of the eye : The nature of Darwinian evolution ; The reaction of plants to light ; The evolution of an image-forming eye

3. The science of colour : The nature of light ; The scientific nature of colour

4. The range of colour : The chromaticity diagram ; Colour addition ; Why are objects coloured? ; Subtractive colour ; Colour painting

5. The visual system and colour : Rods and scotopic vision ; Cones and photopic vision ; The Young-Helmholtz Theory of colour vision ; Alternatives to trichromatic vision ; Colour blindness : Missing cones; Malfunctioning cones; Other types of colour blindness

6. Perceived colour and environment : Background effects ; Colour constancy ; Colour, intensity and saturation ; The decay and recovery of pigments ; Afterimages ; Flicker colour

7. Painting and painting pigments : Cave paintings ; Art pigments used in ancient Egypt ; The pigments of ancient Rome ; The pigments of Mediaeval Europe ; Renaissance and Baroque painting and pigments ; Painting in the 18th century ; Painting from the 19th century to the present

8. The development of dyes : Dyeing and mordants ; Natural dyes ; Synthetic dyes.

9. Colouring pottery and glass : The origin of pottery ; Coloured decoration of pottery ; The origin of glass ; Coloured glass : Stained-glass windows; Decorative glassware

10. Projecting coloured images : The first projected coloured image ; Land projected images ; General comments concerning perceived colours

11. Early colour photography : The pinhole camera and camera obscura ; Sorting images : Joseph Nicéphore Niépce; Louis Daguerre; William Henry Fox Talbot; The wet collodion process and modern film ; Early colour photography : Louis Ducos de Hauron; The Lippmann process ; Comments on early colour photography

12. Colour photography : The Autochrome process ; The Kodachrome process ; Digital cameras ; Photography as an art form

13. Colour cinematography : Persistence of vision ; The birth of cinematography : The work of Louis Le Prince; Other pioneers of cinematography ; Introduction of colour : Dufaycolour; Technicolour ; Digital film technology ; Colour, black-and-white or both

14. Colour television : Paul Nipkow and mechanical scanning ; The first working television system ; Producing a television signal by electronic scanning ; Viewing television with cathode-ray tubes ; Colour television with CRT displays ; Liquid-crystal displays ; Plasma displays ; OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) technology : The basic technology of an LED; OLED television screens

15. Coloured light displays : Fluorescent and neon lighting ; Son et Lumière ; Floodlighting and various light shows

16. Practical uses of colour : Colour as a safety tool : Traffic lights; Railway signals; Identifying gas in cylinders; Colours of hospital pipelines; Underground utility colour codes ; General use of colour : Resistors; The London Underground map ; Commercial uses of colour : Colour labelling of food; Colour and advertising.