In 1965, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson tasked NRC with selecting and precisely defining the red colour of the flag. The late Dr. Gunter Wyszecki recommended and defined two limit standards for the red colour, which were measured on a General Electric Hardy spectrophotometer, using an NRC-developed standard procedure. NRC pioneered the first application of the Standard Colorimetric System of the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) to specify the colour of a national emblem making Canada and Canadian industry a leader in the measurement of colour and optical properties of materials.