About VeriVide
History
Enlightening the world: the VeriVide story
In the 1950s, as industry and consumers alike grew more colour conscious and aware, the lack of a standard measure of daylight became a significant problem for manufacturers. The variability of natural daylight meant that colour assessment was an inefficient, hit-and-miss procedure that often made it difficult for manufacturers to achieve consistent levels of product quality.
The solution had to be a light source that could simulate daylight to an agreed international standard.
Because of variation in the constituents of daylight, daylight readings from across the world were brought to the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) conference in Vienna in 1963. From this mass of data, a mean colour temperature of 6500 Kelvin was accepted as the International Standard of Daylight, then and now known as D65.
But the new lamp technology needed to produce D65 accurately, consistently and continuously proved much more elusive.
It was Leslie Hubble, chairman of the British Colour Council and long renowned as a problem solver at Thorn Lighting, who developed the solution - a fluorescent lamp coated with a particular blend of seven rare earth phosphors. This became the world’s first reliable D65 light source.
Aged 65, Leslie Hubble retired from Thorn Lighting to set up his own company. In his home workshop he built his first D65 colour assessment cabinet and called it VeriVide - a name derived from Latin that broadly translates as ‘see in truth’. VeriVide is pronounced ‘Very Vidy’ as in ‘Very Tidy’ Leslie Hubble offered the VeriVide cabinet to Marks and Spencer, who were so impressed that the company immediately ordered more. That was the beginning of a great British success story.
The VeriVide brand itself became such a ‘standard’ that in 2001 we changed the company name from Leslie Hubble Ltd to VeriVide Ltd. Everything else - our world-beating expertise, quality workmanship, personal service and deep commitment to continuous research and improvement - remains the same. Since then, VeriVide’s product programme has further strengthened its breadth and depth, developing the DigiEye System. VeriVide still leads the drive to further perfect the D65 light source, and to develop colour assessment technologies for a widening range of industrial applications.
In 2003 VeriVide moved to purpose built premises in Enderby, close to the motorway network.
