Talk:Flag of the United States

Colors (again...)

"The current internal style guide of the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs specifies PMS 282C blue and PMS 193C red, and gives RGB and CMYK conversions generated by Adobe InDesign."

I haven't found a single conversion program that turns PMS 193C into #B31942 or PMS 282C into #0A3161. It's not uncommon for designers to specifically choose different shades for differing mediums. Is there any evidence that the RGB/CMYK values in the DoS guide were specifically converted from Pantone? (I bring this up in part because there have been arguments before where the credibility of the DoS docs was attacked with arguments that "random staffers" were being unspecific, and this phrasing, which has no source and may well be false, also seems to fit that messaging.) If it's accurate, can we cite a source, and if it's not, can we alter/strike it? TheTaraStark (talk) 20:57, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Should we not use the Pantone color as most countries do here on Wikipedia File:Flag of the United States (DoS ECA Color Standard) (Pantone).svg .....or the one recommended by the department itself for digital consumption File:Flag of the United States (DoS ECA Color Standard).svg Moxy🍁 21:04, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

We should be using the non-commercial version. Pantone is a copywritten color system and is not appropriate CreativeNightPainter (talk) 06:49, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

I haven't checked whether this is still relevant (Either in terms of the article or the current RGB colours), but the claim about conversion in InDesign 6 comes from this version of the style guide JPD (talk) 05:59, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Colors

I redid the entire Colors section as it had several errors. Firstly, the DDD-F-416F colors are incorrect. The specification of the colors is not DDD-F-416F, but the one superseding it, DDD-F-416E. In regards to the colors themselves, color No. 70001 is white in the Standard Color Reference of America. By default, it is equivalent to white in all other color matching systems. A better conversion of the DDD-F-416E colors is #BF0A30 for red and #00205B for blue. Furthermore, because the DDD-F-416E colors are required for all flags produced for the U.S. federal government, we are able to see what flags the federal government uses. From several examples that I can find online, the flags they use have colors that do not match the former DDD-F-416F colors. Rather, they match the other colors listed.

Some of the files listed in this section, specifically File:Flag of the United States (DoS ECA Color Standard) (Pantone).svg and File:Flag of the United States (Pantone).svg, either do not have a source or the source provided does not support the colors being used in the file. For that reason, I have removed those flags. HoosierMan1816 (talk) 13:42, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

You need to source that. Burn the flag (talk) 04:07, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

You seem fairly confused. DDD-F-416F superseded DDD-F-416E, not the other way round. In any case, the colour specifications given in both documents are essentially the same - the differences being that E gives the numbers as well as the names of the Cable and refers to the 9th edition of the color card, while F gives the names only and refers to the 10th edition.

The RGB colours used in File:Flag_of_the_United_States_(DDD-F-416F_specifications_-_relative).svg are based on colorimetric analysis of the 9th edition of the SCCA, so if there is any real difference between the colours in E and F, this illustration is based on E (the older one). But I suspect there hasn't been much change from the 9th edition to the 10th edition, and mismatch you're seeing between that image and pictures of current flags has more to do around the assumptions used in the original analysis and the conversion to RGB.

You have put in the article the statement "When matched in the the Pantone Matching System (PMS), these colors are "White", "Old Glory Red" PMS 193C, and "Old Glory Blue" PMS 281C." You did not provide a source for this, and I don't know of any reason to be confident that Pantone's "Old Glory Red" and "Old Glory Blue" have been derived through matching with the Cable colours, rather than based on an older/alternative specification of the flag colours. As for white, equating SCCA/SCRA White with Pantone White is very understandable, but claiming that sort of equivalence is based on matching seems dubious. I hesitate to get into the question of which colours should be used in the main image, but we should definitely avoid overstating the status of these conversions. JPD (talk) 05:50, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

None of Pantone's colors are at all close to any of the relevant Cable colors. –jacobolus (t) 06:09, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

yes, and i object to the removal of the CIE and Munsell data for the SCRA colors. the information was well-sourced and is difficult to obtain otherwise, and the Pantone colors aren't a sufficient substitute. i especially object to this text: "these colors are 'White', 'Old Glory Red' PMS 193C, and 'Old Glory Blue' PMS 281C.... the colors are 'White' #FFFFFF, 'Old Glory Red' #BF0A30, and 'Old Glory Blue' #00205B." using the SCRA color names here in quotation marks suggest that these are definitions when they are not, and it obscures the fact that #00205B is Pantone's conversion for PMS 281 C and not an accepted conversion for Cable no. 70075 Old Glory Blue.

i agree with the note aboves regarding DDD-F-416F (2005) versus DDD-F-416E (1981) and their corresponding SCRA standards. i'll go further and dispute the claim here that Cable no. 70001 White is "equivalent to white in all other color matching systems" because there is no common definition of "white" across color systems. notably, Pantone Matching System does not include white at all! PMS is generally the wrong tool to convert color swatches to SRGB, but it's especially the wrong tool for neutral white.

for all of these reasons, i suggest we revert this section to its previous version. beezany (talk) 00:27, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

ps. one of the good things about the previous version is that it did not assume that Cable no. 70001 White is an abstract neutral white, but instead showed its measured color under a standard illuminant. that's important if you take the standard as specifying the shade of white fabric required for flags. because sRGB uses the same illuminant (D65), you can use the measurements as-is to show how a physical flag would look under standard lighting (which is daylight-colored but quite dim, like the light through a window). you can make a more abstract representation by color-correcting the swatches so that no. 70001 becomes the white point (#FFFFFF in sRGB), but that loses information. the previous version was better because it shows both the physical and abstract representations. beezany (talk) 03:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the previous version was better up to the point where it possibly places too much emphasis on colour shades, but I would be hesitant to make claims about how well the converted measurements reflect what a physical flag would look like. There is some room for alterrnative conversions from C to D65 (maybe not significant) and the original measurements were taken using the matte side of the fabric sample, which is not obviously the correct choice when talking about G-SPEC flags. JPD (talk) 13:25, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

good point about the matte swatch.

i don't think it's too much emphasis on color shades, though. it's comparable to Flag of Japan listing the different standards for acrylic and nylon flags, or Flag of France listing three different national standards and their conversions to common color systems for illustration. this article was similar, communicating the specs from multiple national standards (using SCRA and PMS colors) and translating them to common color systems (CIE, Munsell, and sRGB), with references.

i've used that information in multiple projects over the last ten years, and it's annoying to find it suddenly deleted with no sources justifying the change, and an explanation with several errors (like claiming a 1981 standard supersedes a 2005 standard, or making false assumptions about white points). beezany (talk) 22:49, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, giving the white RGB values in 1-as-maximum form, while the other colours in the same table use 255-as-maximum is just silly. JPD (talk) 06:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Benjamin Franklin's supposed endorsement of the East India Company flag

In the section of the article which discusses whether the Continental Union flag was based on the flag of the British East India Company, there is a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin recommending the East India flag to George Washington. This would be major evidence in favor of the connection, and has been repeated often in online debates surrounding the origin of the flag. However, Benjamin Franklin never said this.

The source of the quote, Robert Johnson's Saint Croix 1770–1776: The First Salute to the Stars and Stripes is partially available on Google Books, but the specific page cited is missing. The first attribution I could find of this quote to Benjamin Franklin is on page 189 of W. J. Gordon's 1915 book Flags of the World, Past and Present (available on the Internet Archive). Gordon cites the quote to Robert Campbell's 1890 book Our Flag (also available on the Internet Archive), but seemingly misinterprets his source. Starting on page 35, Our Flag narrates a story about Benjamin Franklin and George Washington meeting an anonymous professor in Cambridge in which the professor suggests to them adopting the East India flag. Gordon presumably mistakenly thought that Franklin said the quote when compiling his book, which was later sourced by Robert Johnson and Robert Johnson by this Wikipedia article.

Also, Robert Campbell's story about the professor who suggested the flag is entirely unsourced and almost certainly a fiction. It describes a congressional committee to design the flag which did not exist, includes historical characters who are recorded as not having been in Cambridge at the time the story takes place, and the professor predicts events years in advance in the independence of the United States. Even Gordon while citing the story is skeptical of Campbell's claim that the full speech was recorded verbatim.

The quote and its attributee are both made up and invent a much more compelling case for the American adoption of the EIC flag than actually exists.

I suggest removing the whole paragraph describing the quote. Repmelior (talk) 23:11, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Request to remove false Ben Franklin quote

Remove the fifth paragraph in the 'First Flag' section. It discusses a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin which is not real.

The origin of this claim is on page 189 of W. J. Gordon's 1915 book Flags of the World, Past and Present, which is a misinterpretation of a story from page 46 of Robert Campbell's 1890 book Our Flag. Campbell attributed the quote to an anonymous professor who Gordon mistook for Benjamin Franklin. Campbell's story is also unsourced and almost certainly made up, as no historical records corroborate his description.

For more detail, refer to my previous talk page post. Given that nobody has objected to it within a week of it being up, I assume the change is uncontroversial.

Repmelior (talk) 20:38, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. NotJamestack (talk) 21:06, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

References