In 1794 John Dalton presented a lecture to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society about colour vision. The first two sentences are shown below:

It has been observed, that our ideas of colours, sounds, tastes, etc. excited by the same object may be very different in themselves, without our being aware of it; and that we may nevertheless converse intelligibly concerning such objects, as if we were certain the impressions made by them on our minds were exactly similar. All, indeed, that is required for this purpose, is, that the same object should uniformly make the same impression on each mind; and that objects that appear different to one should be equally so to others.

It is interesting to reread this sentence again in the light of the recent controversy about the blue and black dress.