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Test Holmgren (Wool)

Students at the University of Toronto used the Holmgren Wool test for laboratory exercises, which physicians and railway/shipping companies also used to detect color-blind employees. The test kit contained test and confusion worsteds - if a subject matched confusion colors instead of test colors, they were deemed color-blind. Fithiof Holmgren invented the test as the first successful attempt to standardize color-blindness detection after a railway accident suggested the engineer was color-blind. Holmgren's original test was refined by Dr. William Thomson to make it simpler for non-experts to conduct testing and transmit results.

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306 views1 page

Test Holmgren (Wool)

Students at the University of Toronto used the Holmgren Wool test for laboratory exercises, which physicians and railway/shipping companies also used to detect color-blind employees. The test kit contained test and confusion worsteds - if a subject matched confusion colors instead of test colors, they were deemed color-blind. Fithiof Holmgren invented the test as the first successful attempt to standardize color-blindness detection after a railway accident suggested the engineer was color-blind. Holmgren's original test was refined by Dr. William Thomson to make it simpler for non-experts to conduct testing and transmit results.

Uploaded by

Nurma
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Students at the University of Toronto used the Holmgren Wool test for laboratory exercises.

Physicians and laymen used the test primarily for the detection of colour-blind employees of
railway and shipping lines. A set of instructions (most likely added at the University of
Toronto) were pasted inside the front lid of the container (see above). These instructions are
very similar to a variation of Holmgrens test designed by Dr. William Thomson, a
Philadelphia ophthalmologist.
The test kit consists of three test worsteds and forty match and confusion worsteds. The
subject was asked to match the worsteds with the test wool. If she chose the confusion
colours instead of the proper match colours, the subject was said to be colour blind. For
example, with the Pink Test worsted, if the subject chose blue or violet, the subject would be
termed red-blind. If she chose green or gray, the subject was said to be green-blind.
Fithiof Holmgren (1831-1897), the inventor of the above test, was a Swedish physiologist
who made his reputation studying the retinas electrical response to light. Early in his career,
Holmgren studied under Herman von Helmholtz and Emil DuBois-Reymond. The success
and popularity of Holmgrens original test owed as much to his innovation as to the context
of his work. Holmgrens original test was directly inspired by a well-publicized railway
accident at Lagerlunda, Sweden, in 1876. Holmgren suspected that the engineer of the train
suffered from colour-blindness and he set out to test this theory by examining 266 employees
of the Uppsala Gabole line. As he suspected, thirteen of these employees were found to be
colour blind. Holmgrens test quickly established itself as a systematic, reliable way of
detecting colour blindness in railway and shipping employees.
The original Holmgren test of 1879 was the first successful attempt to standardize the
detection of colour-blindness. Seebeck and Wilson had made a similar attempt in the 1850s
but their efforts were ignored and forgotten (Boring, 1942). Holmgren based his test on the
Young-Helmholtz theory of colour perception which stated that there were three sets of
colour perceiving elements in the retina. According to the theory, a defect in one of these
elements caused a variant of colour-blindness. Holmgen designed the test to require
matching, rather than naming of colours. The original test was more cumbersome than the kit
used by U of T students; it had over 160 wools: 3 test colours, and 20 match and confusion
colours, (8 shades each).
Dr. William Thomson* devised his test under similar circumstances. In 1879 the American
government commissioned Thomson to devise a colour-blind test for railway and shipping
employees. Thomson worked to simplify Holmgrens method so that a "non-professional"
could conduct the testing and transmit the results to an expert for interpretation. In a series of
variations to Holmgrens test, Thomson reduced the number of matching colours, and
numbered the worsteds. Much of the success of the Holmgren-Thomson test can be attributed
to the simplicity and portability of its design. This test represents one of the earliest examples
of a psychological test used on a large group of people.

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