One of my favorite vga crts had a very thoughtful feature in this regard. A button you
could push would modify the color output from regular vga, ibm white on blue (ick), I
think green, and all amber. The amber was for night time so the user isn't burning
their retinas in. Sorta the same symptom of not seeing an led or star when you look right
at it but you can see it if you look next to it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Jaeger <cube1 at charter.net>
Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.orgDate: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 20:29:32
To: General Discussion On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: different types of monitor strain
Stare at any color picture with large areas of color for a while (a
couple of minutes), and then stare at a white piece of paper. You will
see the color complements. The cones get "tired". It has nothing to do
with focus, but everything to do with the same image appearing on the
same area of the retina for an extended time.
On 8/14/2012 7:20 PM, Chris Tofu wrote:
I got a call from a man who has been in the
development business since the 70s. We got to talking about a whole lot of stuff (actually
it was more listening on my part then anything else). On the topic of eyestrain (?) he
said that different colors (primary?) have different focal depths, so at least for some
people strain is caused when looking at a color monitor w/fine dot pitch. I have to at
least take him at his word on that, but when I mentioned that staring at green phosphors
for an extended length of time (>30 minutes say) caused white to appear pink. For
instance the numbers on a cars speedometer. He said he never experienced that. Can anyone
explain the reasons for that? It stands to reason that causing your eyes to focus on
something small and multichromatic would cause strain (you're forcing your eyes to
focus on a single point that in essence appears to be at varying distances. I don't
understand the pink eye effect though.