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International orange

shades of orange with red; used to set objects apart from their surroundings

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ2529373
Source-derived summary

International orange is a color used in the aerospace industry and maritime industry to set objects apart from their surroundings, similar to safety orange, but deeper and with a more reddish tone.

Variations

There are several variants of international orange.

Aerospace

The Advanced Crew Escape Suits pressure suits worn by NASA astronauts and the previous Launch Entry Suit use this color, as opposed to the lighter tone of safety orange used by the United States Air Force's high-altitude suits. This was also planned for the Constellation Space Suit systems that were to be flight-ready by 2015.

The Bell X-1, the first airplane to break the sound barrier, was also painted in International Orange.

Golden Gate Bridge

The tone of international orange used to paint the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California is slightly lighter than the standard international orange used by military contractors and in engineering, thus increasing its visibility to ships, but darker than the one used in aerospace. The international orange paint used on the Golden Gate Bridge is specially formulated to protect the bridge from the danger of rust from salt spray off the ocean, and from the moisture of the San Francisco fog that frequently rolls in from the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate to San Francisco Bay. The 25 de Abril Bridge in Lisbon, Portugal also uses this color.

Engineering

The adjacent box displays the generic, red tone of international orange used by military contractors and in engineering generally.

The source of this color is Federal Standard 595, a U.S. federal government standard set up in 1956 for paint colors which is mostly used by military contractors and also in engineering.

Editorial summary

“International orange” enters the record as shades of orange with red; used to set objects apart from their surroundings. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what International, orange and shades can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2015, 1956—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around International, orange and shades.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“International orange” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, International, orange and shades provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2529373. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015 and 1956.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “International orange”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow International orange primary sources, International orange archive and International research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “International orange”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from International orange” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.