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> 1. Green can relieve visual fatigue and aid in inspections > In the early days, due to technological restrictions, quality inspections relied on workers manu
by ludwigvan 8y ago
> 1. Green can relieve visual fatigue and aid in inspections
> In the early days, due to technological restrictions, quality inspections relied on workers manually checking the boards with their bare eyes. Squinting at tiny circuits all days is tiring work, but neurologists and psychologists agree that the wavelength of green light has relaxing effects on the body and can reduce fatigue. Additionally, they have found that the sensors in human eyes, or cones, are most sensitive to green light. Therefore, the contrast is greater between the circuit traces, pads, silkscreen printing and empty spaces. Just by observing the boards from the outside, one can easily identify defects in the outer layers. Compare the below images of green boards to other colors such as blue, yellow or even black and white. With higher contrast, errors are easier to spot.
Perhaps an IDE theme with a green background would be similarly helpful for programmers. Any particular suggestions?
- robterrell 8y agoThis research is why we were sold computers with green-colored phosphor monitors back in the 80s. I'm not going back, but if you're into it, maybe try: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=gerane.Theme-Green https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=gerane.T...
- amelius 8y agoAt some point people started switching to amber. If above research is correct, then why was amber deemed preferable?
- aparks517 8y agoMy recollection is that it was mostly for brightness. I think the amber phosphor had shorter persistence and was less prone to burn-in as well. But yeah, kinda harsh on the eyes in comparison.
- spindle 8y agoI don't know why it was initially deemed preferable, but as a user it was really nice to have something different for a change.
- bunnycorn 8y agoI have a gray background (so I can't see refelections in the black) and the current line is a dark green.
- blueline 8y agosolarized is really popular and the dark theme is a sorta dark blue-green
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoHuman eyes are more sensitive to slight variations in green than other colours. This is why YUV video often encodes green sharper and why 16bit colour give 6 bits to green and 5 bits to red/blue. So on a circuit board with subtle green-on-green variations, it makes sense that they picked green. But since people have many more rods than cones, black/white contrast is easier to discern and white uses all the subpixels in your display to maximize luminance. And speaking of subpixels, subpixel antialiasing effectively triples your resolution when displaying black/white contrast. The brain also highlights contours of contrasting black/white. (There's an evolutionary quirk in our blue-sensing cones that allows you to see contrasting blue/yellow better than most combinations too but still not as well as black/white.) So sharp white on black or black on white are typically better suited to human vision if you're trying to discern outlines like when reading text. Black/white also avoids the persistence effects that cones have, where when you look away from a green image for example, you'll see an inverted magenta copy of the image for a second or two.
- ludwigvan 8y agoThank you, very well explained.
- Sharlin 8y agoMost ”black”boards these days are green, apparently for similar legibility and eye fatigue reasons. Color schemes with a similar background color are definitely available for text editors.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]