Magenta is a color made up of equal parts of red and blue light. This would be the precise definition of the color as defined for computer display Magenta is not a spectral but an extraspectral color: it cannot be generated by light of a single wavelength. Humans, being trichromats, can only see as far as 380 nanometers into the spectrum, i.e., as far as violet.

The hue magenta is the complement of green: magenta pigments absorb green light, thus magenta and green are opposite colors.Before printer's magenta was invented in the 1890s for CMYK printing, and electric magenta was invented in the 1980s for computer displays, these two artificially engineered colors were preceded by the color displayed at right, which is the color originally called magenta made from coal tar dyes in the year 1859.

Magenta (Crayola)
A Crayola color was formulated in 1949; it was originally called brilliant rose but the name was changed in 1958 to magenta. Since this color has a hue code of 329, signifying a tone of rose, the original color name brilliant rose was more accurate.