28 Aug
2014
28 Aug
'14
2:13 p.m.
On Aug 28, 2014, at 3:34 PM, Sam O'nella <barythrin at gmail.com> wrote:
I do recall both green and amber were considered to
cause less strain on
the eyes than white, especially during night time computing. I was sort of
wondering if IBM chose amber just because their competition (Compaq
Portable) already used green.
DEC terminals were initially white (VT05 through VT100). At some point in the VT220 era,
green and amber appeared as alternate colors. Somewhat after that, I think the original
black & white TV set style white changed to ?paper white?.
It would be interesting to find out the sales proportions of the three colors. I remember
them all; I never saw more than a handful of either green or amber.
Early on, green was associated with long persistence displays ? the GT40, the CDC dd60
console, etc. I know early IBM terminals (like the ones for TSO ?- 2550?) were green but
I?m not sure why. Amber showed up much later and as far as I could tell was just a fad
that appeared briefly and went nowhere.
The eyestrain argument has been made for any number of colors, even plasma panel orange.
I don?t know that it was ever more than marketing fictions. The only difference I know of
is that some people like one color and some prefer another.
paul