Why Beige?

[slaveofconvention]

A new story entry has been added:

[drupal=388]Why Beige?[/drupal]

By Slaveofconvention

Back in the 80's and early 90's, computer equipment was almost universally one single boring colour. Beige. This begs the question "Why?" With the huge range of tones, shades and colours at the fingertips of PC manufacturers, why did they choose possibly the most bland and uninteresting colour ever to find its way into our homes and offices. I decided to do some digging and try to find out...

[Mark_Hardware]

interesting.... you know what I've always been curious about? Why green? The old monitors, pcbs, gauges in cars... everything is green. Even my switches for my windows have a green led

[slaveofconvention]

heh - I don't see a sequel forthcoming, not yet :p

[billygoat333]

good write-up. (I think this might have been my question, a long time ago. dont remember. )

[FuzzyPlushroom]

I always figured that black wasn't welcoming enough, brown was too '70s (and beige took off in the '80s, after all) and no other colours looked respectable enough when covered in cigarette smoke.

[Twigsoffury]

interesting.... you know what I've always been curious about? Why green? The old monitors, pcbs, gauges in cars... everything is green. Even my switches for my windows have a green led

I still refurbish monochromatic green CRT's

oddly enough they make almost every color under the rainbow. and dual or triple color mono (right is green center is white and left is red or blue) CRT's

Restaurants,Tech centers and other places still have a demand for mono-chromatic monitors.

LCD panels don't fair to well in hot,greasy kitchens. if you take a notice next time at a fast food joint, they are almost exclusively still CRT.

Tubes are cheap to. we can order a pallet (28 tubes=max weight for a fedex standard shipment) of CRT's from Quest international at under 30$ a tube.
hah, charge 159.99$ to a restaurant. and you make a hell of a profit.

once you know what will kill you if you touch it, Changing a tube out takes around 20-40 minutes. about another 15 to fiddle with the picture magnets to make the screen square (that takes talent, and a set of eagle eyes). other then that we like to hold them for 24 hours so we can burn them in.

customers like next day fixes

[edit] I've seen some beige computers that were so dirty they looked a deep brown color. except for the circle where the monitor sat.