3 ms·

An interesting take on this issue is employing staff where color matters. As the head of a department involved in electronics I used to have to employ staff wh

An interesting take on this issue is employing staff where color matters. As the head of a department involved in electronics I used to have to employ staff who had to be able to read the resistor color code and for that they needed good color vision. During interviews one of the evaluative measures was to give applicants a card with a careful selection of numbered resistors taped to it and they had to tell the interviewing panel their resistance. Given that figure of ~8% of males with color blindness we often found applicants that were color blind (most applicants were male). To avoid the many pitfalls of doing this, which could involve an applicant first discovering that he was color blind during the interview, we required them to write the resistance of the resistor against its number on a sheet of paper and hand it to us (e.g.: resistor #8 was say 470 ohms - we only needed the numerical value and not the actual colors (which for this example are yellow violet brown)). The sheet was handed along the panel - all of whom were conversant with the color code - in a nonchalant manner without comment (we did not tell applicants whether their answers were right or wrong). Doing it this way avoided us having to use Ishihara color blindness test cards which could be deemed an on-the-fly medical test and that had complicating implications. Of course, experienced applicants who knew the color code by second nature would often ask if they could just verbally run down the list and we let them do that.

acadapter 5y ago
However, this whole situation could be solved with different standards (dots, dashes, and less colors) along with laws against discrimination. If another scheme were to be implemented, men could have the same success rate as women when applying for this job.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  I certainly agree, but it would take a very long time to implement given that the resistor color code goes back well before WWII. I can't remember when the system was introduced but resistors in all those early superhetrodyne radios from about 1930 onwards used it, thus we've going on 90 years worth of electronics installed with color-coded resistors (and more recently capacitors). This is an enormous legacy, and even given the more rapid turnover of electronics these days there's still going to be a huge legacy of color-coded components for many decades to come. If you are in electronics then you'll know that even relatively inexperienced people can read and sort resistors almost as fast as they can pick them up. In essence, determining the value of a resistor is about as fast as the human reaction time gets which is less than 100 milliseconds (about the speed a fluent reader reads words - like Morse code, one doesn't sequentially read the colors but recognizes the pattern as a whole). Therefore, any replacement system would have to be as easy and compatible or it'd likely meet with opposition. It seems to me the reason the resistor color code has had such longevity is that it's so dead easy to learn and so easy to use. Perhaps the best solution would be to implement both schemas but then there's the likely problem of having sufficient surface space on the component to implement it (it's already a major problem on modern circuit board components as everything is so small). You're absolutely right, colorblind people need a better deal, especially males who are disproportionately afflicted. If I recall only about 1% of women are affected, it was one of the major reasons why they were preferred over men on production lines, etc.

acadapter 5y ago

However, this whole situation could be solved with different standards (dots, dashes, and less colors) along with laws against discrimination. If another scheme were to be implemented, men could have the same success rate as women when applying for this job.

hilbert42 5y ago
I certainly agree, but it would take a very long time to implement given that the resistor color code goes back well before WWII. I can't remember when the system was introduced but resistors in all those early superhetrodyne radios from about 1930 onwards used it, thus we've going on 90 years worth of electronics installed with color-coded resistors (and more recently capacitors). This is an enormous legacy, and even given the more rapid turnover of electronics these days there's still going to be a huge legacy of color-coded components for many decades to come. If you are in electronics then you'll know that even relatively inexperienced people can read and sort resistors almost as fast as they can pick them up. In essence, determining the value of a resistor is about as fast as the human reaction time gets which is less than 100 milliseconds (about the speed a fluent reader reads words - like Morse code, one doesn't sequentially read the colors but recognizes the pattern as a whole). Therefore, any replacement system would have to be as easy and compatible or it'd likely meet with opposition. It seems to me the reason the resistor color code has had such longevity is that it's so dead easy to learn and so easy to use. Perhaps the best solution would be to implement both schemas but then there's the likely problem of having sufficient surface space on the component to implement it (it's already a major problem on modern circuit board components as everything is so small). You're absolutely right, colorblind people need a better deal, especially males who are disproportionately afflicted. If I recall only about 1% of women are affected, it was one of the major reasons why they were preferred over men on production lines, etc.