alt Hacker NewsSide question, was there a reason early CRT screens were amber? Or was this perhaps maybe downstream of PLATO & the first plasma (and touch) screens being a Friendly Orange Glow?
Recommending Friendly Orange Glow (Doer, 2018), btw. Fun read. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545610/the-friendly...
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The brain perceives amber as a "bright" color that contrasts well with black, without the headaches that come from staring at white light for hours.
There was a considerable debate on the ergonomics of terminal colors, where the pseudoscience said green and amber were the best... and white wasn’t very good. I’m not sure what the truth was. Adding a couple of inches to the 12-inch screens of the time would have made a bigger difference in eye fatigue than phosphor color. That said, there was something magical about glowing phosphor...
IIRC, amber was considered the most eye friendly color back then. The cheaper monochrome screens were green-on-black.
Amber was fairly unusual. More common to see white or green.
The color of the screens is related to the phosphor used to coat the back of the screen, which is excited to glow by the electron beam. According to wiki, amber was used as an "eye-friendly" ergonomic color for similar reasons we use blue blocking filters today.