28 Aug
2014
28 Aug
'14
6:11 p.m.
Right, my VT131 is white-on-black, and I have a VT420 in amber. I wasn't
really aware that anything but amber was available at least on the VT320
and VT420. Every single one I remember from days gone by was always in
amber. Most of the once-fairly-ubiquitous WY-60 terminals I remember were
also in amber. Maybe just the popular color where I was growing up?
IIRC, back then, there were perennial debates about which was better or
worse for eye strain... I always thought it was more an issue of personal
preference than anything else. Green is probably my favorite, although
seeing that amber always brings back feelings of DEC nostalgia for me.
Best,
Sean
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
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