Timeline for Did monochrome CRTs used in terminals have a reddish hue when they were displaying white color?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Post Revisions
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 hours ago | comment | added | dave | Side note for amusement - you can get multiple colours on a monochrome white CRT. The BBC science program 'Tomorrows World' did a little over-the-air experiment in 1968. I recall being unable to see the colour at the time, but see it now (but of course I am viewing on a colour LCD). | |
| 23 hours ago | answer | added | Tom Williams | timeline score: 2 | |
| yesterday | comment | added | dave | Per the VT100 technical manual, page 1-3, the VT100 tube used a P4 phosphor, which wikipedia describes as white. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | gidds | Bear in mind that monochrome monitors were in use for quite some time. In the mid 1990s I used an Atari SM124 with my STE; it gave greater resolution than was possible with colour monitors/TVs. — I remember it being pretty close to white; it may have been very slightly bluish, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t reddish. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | dave | @dirkt - it seems I was wrong about the PDP-1's model 30 display It used a P7 phosphor, which has a short-persistence blue-white component, and a long-persistence yellow component. So, anything not quickly refreshed by the host will fade to yellow. The tube was intended for radar, per the video narration. | |
| yesterday | comment | added | Chris H | @dirkt we had a roomful of 286-based PCs with white mono monitors in my school in the 90s; they were what I learnt Pascal on. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | dave | @dirkt - once again we see the different viewpoint of 'personal computer users' versus people using older machines! | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | Fred | The first CRT terminal I used was a DEC model in 1975 - I used it, on & off for nearly 1 months. It had white text on a black background, but at times the white characters did have a pale blue hue. Later green or amber on a black background was typical on CRT screens. Regarding a reddish tinge, on some CRT screens, whether they were used as computer monitors or in televisions, the black background could sometimes have slightly reddish tinge.. | |
| 2 days ago | history | edited | Toby Speight | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
spelling fixes
|
| 2 days ago | answer | added | Justme | timeline score: 10 | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | dirkt | @dave I've seen the green/amber on monitors in the Apple II era, and one terminal that I've seen connected to a PDP8 was green, too (don't remember which one it was). There's actually a video that shows the PDP-1 which shows the non-uniform color I was talking about - it's green at lower intensities, and gets whit-ish at high intensities, with a kind of blue-ish hue at middle intensities. Maybe that's what you call white? Because green and amber monitors had similar characteristics... | |
| 2 days ago | history | became hot network question | |||
| 2 days ago | comment | added | dave | @dirkt - DEC VT05, VT50, VT52, VT100 were all white phosphors. Only with the VT220 was there a choice of white, green, or amber models. Pretty much all the non-DEC glass ttys I saw (Newbury, etc) were white too. DEC scopes such as on the PDP-1 and graphics terminals such as the GT42 were white; come to think of it, so was the CDC 6000 console. The canonical 'green screen' was in my experience just an IBM thing, and maybe Tektronics vector terminals. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | dirkt | I have seen lots of monochrome green and amber monitors, but I've never seen a monochrome black-and-white monitor (though I have seen a black-and-white only TV). At least for the monochrome monitors I've seen, the main difference to naive emulation is that the dots have a "halo" that does not have a uniform color. | |
| 2 days ago | answer | added | Raffzahn | timeline score: 19 | |
| 2 days ago | history | edited | dave | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
clean up title
|
| 2 days ago | answer | added | John Doty | timeline score: 7 | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | Stephen Kitt | Right, and what I had in mind was this answer showing a screen with bright white phosphors. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | dave | The OP is, I think, talking about nominally white phosphors appearing to have a red tinge. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact | There were many variants. They used to be called "green screens" because most of them were green for many years. But amber and white were also common options, with a lot of variance by manufacturer. There is even more variance in the font - anything from 5x7 upper-case to 9x14 (classic IBM PC monochrome, IIRC). Slashed 0 or not. Etc. Pick a specific model and then someone can help. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | Stephen Kitt | See also What were other colors beside green and amber for monochrome monitors? | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | Stephen Kitt | This question is similar to: Exactly what color was the text on monochrome terminals with green-on-black and amber-on-black screens?. If you believe it’s different, please edit the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem. | |
| 2 days ago | comment | added | dave | There surely is no single answer. It depends on the phosphor in use, the electronics in the CRT, the age of the tube, and the settings on the individual unit. From memory, I would not describe any monochrome white tube that I ever used as 'reddish'. | |
| 2 days ago | history | asked | Dimitrios Desyllas | CC BY-SA 4.0 |