[HN Gopher] Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
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Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 993 points
Date : 2026-03-25 15:46 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bethmathews.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bethmathews.substack.com)
| d--b wrote:
| Ha, I am very proud that I made that discovery independently as
| well. In the Light vs Dark theme, I settled on a light greyish
| green that is somewhat close to the one described here. It really
| does reduce eye fatigue.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Reminds me of Go Away Green -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Away_Green
| dylan604 wrote:
| Go Away reads to me as a command to the viewer to go away
| rather than the intended "we want the object to go away from
| the viewer's thoughts". If they were okay with a phrase like Go
| Away Green, why not something like Hidden View Green,
| Irrelevant Green, Don't Look Here Green, etc. Some PR
| department would have a field day
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Prob because Go Away Green sounds way cooler than all of
| those and it's not a user facing term anyways.
| deruta wrote:
| And alliteration for extra cool.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| "Move Along Green"
| ortusdux wrote:
| A gas station near me painted their bollards this color. I've
| wondered if this would be a credible legal defense for someone
| that accidentally backed into them.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| The thin strip of yellow/black caution stripes on an otherwise
| unnoticable green conduit was so ironic it made me smile:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Away_Green#/media/File:The_...
|
| It's saying "DON'T NOTICE THIS! (also, please notice this!)"
| jcalx wrote:
| Reminds me of turquoise cockpits [0], another workspace where
| visual fatigue considerations are important.
|
| [0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16434/why-
| are-r...
| somat wrote:
| I wonder if the designers of cold war soviet planes read the same
| color theory because their cockpits are always a very particular
| indescribable shade of green. There were also very specific
| colors for subsystems, yellow for fuel, purple for hydraulics
| etc. Much more than the contemporary US designs.
| Loughla wrote:
| My father was a mechanic and crew chief working on F-14's
| during his time in the air force. His two takeaways from his
| service were: 1. No one should ever join the military for any
| reason ever forever, and 2. Somebody needs to color code
| literally anything.
|
| He talked about how the wiring schematics were a maze, made
| worse by using only non-labeled gray and black wires with
| connections and mounts that were the same color made of the
| same material.
|
| The exterior being gray makes sense - harder to see with human
| eyes. But internals? They should be massively contrasting
| colors for every single series of pieces to be removed so you
| can just follow along by color.
| saltcured wrote:
| Tangentially, this reminds me of stories from my dad who got
| some kind of special award for having made their ship radar
| the best in the fleet.
|
| Sometime before that, he got a lot of flak for having
| neglected one of the standing rules, to label everything as
| you take it apart and put it back "the way you found it". He
| decided to break it down and put it back the way the
| technical documentation said it should actually go. This
| seems to be part of the reason his radar performed better
| than the others after teardown maintenance.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Cheaper to buy huge spools of gray clad wiring than a lot of
| different color coded wires? Also you don't have to stock a
| lot of different colors for repairs.
| eggsome wrote:
| Surely you mean F-15 right? (F-14 was exclusive to the Navy +
| Iran exports)
| Loughla wrote:
| Womp womp. Yes. F15. Somewhere my father is screaming.
| bityard wrote:
| I worked on military avionics in a previous life and all of
| the planes I worked on had miles of white wires. The reasons
| given to us were:
|
| 1. Cost savings when buying.
|
| 2. There are hundreds to thousands of wires in an aircraft,
| but there are NOT hundreds to thousands of different colors
| of wires (even if we allow for stripes, etc) that are readily
| distinguishable to an overworked airman hunched over in a
| dim, cramped avionics bay trying to fix a plane that needs to
| take off for a mission in an hour.
|
| If you are lucky, the wires are numbered. But even if they
| are, you typically identify a wire by its connector pin and
| PRAY that the fault isn't a break somewhere back in the
| wiring harness.
| xethos wrote:
| I'd also mention that black lasermarked white wire has
| marvelous contrast, even in the dim, covered in dust. Black
| lasermarked (or god help you, heatstamped) wire on damn
| near any other colour, like one finds in automotive, is
| distinctly worse.
|
| Yellow would be manageable, but the wrong shade of red,
| purple, green, or blue (wihch, when seperating systems by
| colour, would inevitably get used) would be shitty to work
| on
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Unfortunately when you get enough conductors you start
| running out of insulator colors and start running into the
| problems copper telephone lines had - using pairs of colors
| (base with stripe) and tracing get pretty hard at that point.
| torginus wrote:
| That color shows up a lot in stairways apartment blocks and
| school corridors and bathrooms in ex-Soviet bloc countries.
|
| My two guesses are that it was colored like that get the pilots
| feel like they were in a particular environment - a familar but
| not exactly private or comfortable one. It's a cultural thing
| like if you paint a bus yellow, Americans will think of a
| school bus, but most other people won't.
|
| My other guess is that they only made certain kinds of dye, and
| its very well possible the same factory made it that made it
| for bathroom tiles. In capitalism, if you don't have orange
| paint, for example, some company will just start making it if
| there's a demand.
|
| In communism, if nobody makes it, then it's not available,
| until and if some comittee decides that it should be made.
| gukov wrote:
| The reason for the green stairways was the vast surplus of
| the green paint (used for military equipment) post-WW2.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I've noticed that both American and Soviet planes used greenish
| colors, but the American ones are a yellowish green, while the
| Soviet ones are a bluish green. I've always wondered if the
| American yellowish green was chosen because it's similar to the
| color of the zinc chromate primer used on those aircraft, so
| the transparency of the paint wouldn't be an issue.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| The yellowish-green is the zinc chromate "passivation"
| coating to help prevent corrosion.
| zczc wrote:
| They definitely knew, Soviet books on industrial design and
| architecture explicitly mention Birren [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/search?q="birren"+zelenyi&udm=36&tbs=...
| (search for Russian for "Birren"+green in 20th century books)
| huflungdung wrote:
| Half arsed article. Expected much more detail
| dogscatstrees wrote:
| This article is a gem, thank you. Now off to Sherwin-Williams to
| see what the equivalent color names are. I wonder if there are
| matching formula.
| srmatto wrote:
| Would be cool to get an original copy of "Colors for Interiors:
| Historical and Modern by Faber Birren" and create color matches
| assuming it's not faded too much. I wonder if he created some
| kind of pigmentation ratio (or however paint coloring works)
| that he shared somewhere?
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Planet Money had a story about the quantization of color[0].
| Prior to this, people would essentially bring in a flower,
| piece of pottery, etc that they wanted to color match for the
| particular piece at hand.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2024/07/19/1197961103/pantone-colors-
| law...
| mgerdts wrote:
| In the late 80s I worked in an industrial controls shop. This
| is the type of place that makes the cabinets with all the
| buttons, switches, and lights commonly associated with nuke
| plant controls. Only we did mostly controls for paper making
| machinery for Kimberly-Clark, Appleton Papers, etc.
|
| Most of our green cabinets were spotlite green. Seafoam green
| was rare. Both paint colors were prepared by our local sherwin
| Williams. The colors looked pretty much the same to me.
| mlacks wrote:
| On US submarines, _every_ bulkhead and beam not in the bilge is
| painted seafoam green. We were told it was the most soothing /
| anti-rage inducing color possible - necessary for long
| deployments in cramped quarters.
|
| After a little over a decade of service, no other color
| infuriates me more
| fgonzag wrote:
| Silver lining, at least your triggered by a color that
| basically doesn't exist and is no longer in wide spread use.
| (As in you won't find it as much in daily civilian life)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a fascinating story!
|
| I'd never even heard of this guy.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Gal.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Gal._
|
| Heh. That explains it. I was wondering what problem people
| had with the comment.
|
| I was talking about Faber Birren. The article is basically
| about him. Definitely a guy.
|
| It's always a pleasure to be "corrected," hereabouts...
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's so nice to see colors in any kind of government, industrial,
| or commercial building. The "everything must be gray/beige" fad
| has dominated institutional interior design for at least 30
| years. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I remember the wall colors in
| banks, schools, doctor's offices, mcdonalds, and so on in the
| 1970s and they seemed so wonderful. All these things got a coat
| of white paint sometime in the 2000s and look the same as
| everywhere else now.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel that too. My house had significant chunks painted a
| vivid aquamarine when I moved in 2018, and my now-ex insisted
| that we paint over it all in grey.
|
| After she moved out, I put up greens, yellows, brown, and blue
| all over the house. It's not quite as "public pool" feeling as
| that original aquamarine, but it's certainly more lively than
| grey/white. Funny enough though, when I had a designer come in
| to take measurements and do a mockup for a kitchen reno...
| everything was back to white because that's step one in making
| it look "modern" even though part of the pitch is custom
| cabinetry that _won 't_ just look like that same white IKEA
| stuff that everyone installs now.
| bobomonkey wrote:
| Install the boring shit and use colored vinal wrap for fun.
| Good resale value and you can enjoy life.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's common for homes especially when prepped for sale
| because neutral colors won't clash with whatever the
| potential buyer might want to bring in e.g. furniture,
| artwork, or other decor.
|
| Most of the rooms in my house are painted in colors and I
| mostly like it but it can sometimeds feel fatiguing. I've
| thought about repainting in a neutral gray or green.
| silisili wrote:
| I get that argument, but as a counterpoint of one: Our last
| house we got so tired of the drabness, we used rich reds,
| golds, greens, and an even a bright orange in one room. It
| made the whole house feel so much more vibrant, it's hard
| to explain but it was just... pleasant to look at.
|
| Anyways, the new owners tracked down my wife over some old
| mail, and during the conversation they thanked us for
| having painted it so vividly and said it was part of why
| they were drawn to it. They shared pics and they've done a
| -ton- of work, but the paint colors remain :)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| 2018 was peak chip and jojo. Every suburban chick was into
| grey and barn doors.
| ghaff wrote:
| I had to get my whole house repainted after a kitchen fire.
| Have some black and a lot of white (trim and ceilings) but also
| subtle green in upstairs rooms and very subtle orange
| everywhere else. Kept it simple but prefer it to everything
| being a light gray like a relative has. There still aren't that
| many different paints if retouching is ever needed.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Because it's the least offensive. No one can yell at you or
| claim the color is "dated" if you stick to white/gray/black and
| a touch of stainless steel.
|
| Sad to see how many houses are painted gray or beige in SF now.
| We are going to paint ours purple in protest.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| Reminds me of "Mr. Pine's Purple House"
| inanutshellus wrote:
| This is cyclical.
|
| We went from overwhelming color chaos of pink and green
| toilets, carpeted bathroom floors, and kaleidoscope wallpapers
| to calm, clean, and inoffensive shades of whites and "agreeable
| gray"s.
|
| Soon enough people will stop thinking of those whites/grays as
| a fresh, low-chaos decoration decision and switch to thinking
| of it as oppressively boring and break out with fantastic ideas
| like ... green toilets and kaleidoscope wallpaper.
| jscheel wrote:
| I got through this entire article before I realized it was
| written by someone I worked with back in my agency days. Beth is
| an awesome designer with a great eye. Nice to see her on the
| front page here. Now, to the content: I often wonder how much we
| have lost with our endless quest for minimalism. We can't even
| make buttons look like buttons anymore. Affordances have become
| anemic at times. Designers who think and care deeply about
| functional color theory and usable design should be cherished.
| roughly wrote:
| I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the
| change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole
| lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns,
| driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes.
| There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer
| saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the
| research back in the day to figure out what color the street
| lights should be, that's why they were the color they were."
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I think we've learned a couple of times that lighting
| placement, temperature, and shadow-casting are not ideal [0].
| Also some of the newer lighting does actually fade to a
| different color [1] so it's not just the base temperature of
| the new lights.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower
|
| [1] https://sigostreetlight.com/blogs/common-quality-
| problems-in...
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| I'm sure tons of people along the way "noticed" but if you're
| selling LEDs or you're paid by the LED people to create
| marketing to convince people that LEDs are gonna save the
| planet, you're not gonna bring that up.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house
| with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as
| incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real
| lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power.
| I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all
| over the place so that the aggregate light in the room
| fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all
| to be the same.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| How many life forms do we have to kill before cost
| savings aren't worth it?
|
| Besides, we can have LEDs in better spectrums for under
| 1/5th the costs of incandescents. We just hired stingy
| motherfuckers and don't care about the repercussions of
| our decisions.
| duskdozer wrote:
| I question the cost/energy savings. Seems to me for the
| most part any efficiency gains are being spent on making
| everything 5x as bright and expansive.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use
| 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did.
|
| Yeah I know. I love it in my house.
|
| On the industrial side, sodium vs LED is a much closer
| comparison generally than LED vs incandescent. LEDs kinda
| suck for high bay applications.
| aliher1911 wrote:
| Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of
| 2700K-3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did
| just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll
| have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking
| colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity
| covers for higher cost.
| dotancohen wrote:
| 2700 is really cool. To the GP, if you're looking for
| something more like daylight but not noticeably yellow,
| try 3600k or thereabouts.
|
| The actual temperature of the sun is over 5000k (yes, the
| k in lightbulb temperature corresponds to the Kelvin
| scale of temperature) but after being scattered by our
| atmosphere it appears cooler. And where did all that
| extra light go? It was scattered around, making the sky
| blue!
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| 3700-4500 is my range I like these days
| dotancohen wrote:
| If I could run different lighting after sunset, I'd run
| something high-CRI in your range during the day and a
| low-CRI 3000 after sunset.
|
| As it is, I compromise.
| jacobolus wrote:
| There are LED lamps which have a "warm dim" feature so
| that the appear oranger as you reduce the brightness.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Thanks, that's great to know! However, I also had to
| remove the high-CRI lights from some lamps because I
| found that they disturb my sleep if I have them on in the
| hours before bedtime.
|
| I live in a 240-volt country, though, and I've never seen
| a dimmer switch here.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Personally I find 2700k-rated LED to not even be low-k
| enough to match incandescent.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The color of the solar light depends on the proportion of
| yellowish direct solar light and bluish sky light that
| fall on an object.
|
| When the sky is covered by clouds, which mix the direct
| Sun light and the sky light, you get a color much closer
| to the true color of the Sun.
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, or just living in
| a place where the power is so bad, it causes premature
| failures.
|
| The claimed extra longevity of LED bulbs has not
| materialized for me.
|
| They seem to fail at roughly the same frequency that
| incandescent bulbs did in my home, which makes them about
| 10x to 15x more expensive.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Many complain about this, because they have been fooled
| into buying low-quality lamps, with bad cooling or bad
| electronic components.
|
| I have many Philips LED lamps bought some 10 to 15 years
| ago, which were put in Edison sockets for incandescent
| lamps, and none of them has become defective during all
| these years.
|
| However, even at that time, it was not their cheapest
| model, but one that was claimed to be long-life and I
| believe that later they have discontinued that model in
| favor of cheaper lamps.
|
| I have no idea which vendor of LED lamps might sell good
| LED lamps today, because I never had to search for
| replacements. I assume that good LED lamps must still be
| available, but one must not impulse buy them, but one
| must check carefully the specifications of the lamps and
| the credibility of the vendor, before making a purchase
| decision.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I do not like 2700 K to 3000 K lamps, which are obviously
| yellowish and regardless how high their CRI may be they
| distort the colors of clothes or any other objects.
|
| I also do not like the bluish cheap 6500 K lamps.
|
| I consider optimum the 4000 K lamps. This appear white
| with only a very-slightly yellowish hue, which allows the
| perception of the natural colors of most objects, but it
| still provides a warmer sensation than a strictly neutral
| white color (i.e. one around 5500 K).
| 6510 wrote:
| Depending on where you live the heating might be nice.
|
| In the US people use roughly 10 000 kwh per year.
|
| Say we have a 40 watt bulb, say it burns on average 5
| hours per day or 200 wh. In 365 days that would be 72 kwh
| which at 16 cents per kwh is $11.52 or 0.73% of the
| annual power consumption.
|
| Say one uses 5 light bulbs. Something around $57.60. Say
| leds use only 25% of the power = $14.40 for $43.2 saved.
|
| Well over 10 cents per day.
|
| What are you going to spend your 10 cents on? lol
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The problem is we went from a market that consisted of
| cheapo/good bulbs at various brightness levels to a
| market where Walmart and Home Depot have like 60 linear
| feet of bulbs.
|
| There's no standards and people are clueless and
| confused. There are awesome LEDs, but more often you see
| have harsh, terrible light.
| nine_k wrote:
| Cluing in is really easy. Look for "CRI >= 90", or at
| least "full-spectrum" for the lamps that are easy on the
| eyes. Pick 2700K for softly lit spaces, 4000-4500K for
| brightly lit spaces.
| foobarian wrote:
| The really awesome thing about the 1/10 power consumption
| is that the existing circuits/wiring/sockets now suddenly
| support 10x the light without burning down your house.
| I'm a sucker for well lit space and these lights are just
| heaven for me.
| XorNot wrote:
| I hate incandescents and am glad they're gone. People
| chronically under light their homes at the best of times.
|
| My whole house is neutral white LEDs except the bathrooms
| where we go to cool white to make it easier to clean and
| be sure it's clean (even if it's not spotless, there's a
| huge psychological benefit to not feeling like dim light
| is masking even more grime).
|
| Oddly enough I'm otherwise pretty light sensitive - my
| current office at work has been a nightmare of trying to
| manage glare from badly places overheads and windows.
|
| Going from 500w for my living room to 80w also helps a
| lot (and way more light and a lot less heat).
| adrian_b wrote:
| High-quality white LED lamps are indeed optimal for
| indoor lighting.
|
| That does not make them the best choice for outdoor night
| lighting.
|
| The replacement of the outdoor lighting appears to have
| been motivated in most cases by the desire to divert
| taxpayer funds towards the private companies selling such
| lamps, instead of by any technical reasons.
| yawnr wrote:
| Cool white lights are tacky, offensive to the senses, and
| disruptive to circadian rhythms at night.
| adrian_b wrote:
| For indoor lighting, LED lamps are indeed the right
| solution.
|
| I have also been using for more than a decade 13 W LED
| lamps that produce the same luminous flux as the 100-W
| incandescent lamps or the 23-W compact fluorescent lamps
| used in the past.
|
| However, the requirements for an outdoor night lamp are
| very different. Low-pressure sodium lamps have about the
| same energy efficiency and lifetime as LED lamps, so
| those are not arguments for replacing them. The only
| thing that matters is whether you prefer yellow light or
| white light in a night environment. I definitely prefer
| yellow light, for reasons already mentioned by others,
| i.e. much less interference with night vision, sky light,
| nocturnal animals, or with my street-directed windows at
| home.
|
| If energy efficiency would really matter, one could
| produce monochromatic amber LED lamps with efficiencies
| at least double over the current white LED lamps.
| bux93 wrote:
| Those LED people marketed themselves out of a job, then. I
| repaced one (1) broken light bulb over the past 10 years,
| as opposed to 5 a year before switching to LEDs.
| SyzygyRhythm wrote:
| > that's why they were the color they were
|
| That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor
| lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen
| because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-
| pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially
| monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage,
| color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily
| (they used to be widely used in San Jose because Lick
| Observatory could filter out the 589 nm light).
| salawat wrote:
| ...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the
| area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light
| that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically
| implemented and scaled.
|
| Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED
| nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to
| simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
| nine_k wrote:
| We of course can make LEDs of more or less any color. The
| current white LEDs are high-power blue LEDs that are
| covered by various phosphors to give a mix of colors for
| "full spectrum" illumination. Different color
| temperatures are produced by different mixes of
| phosphors. This is pretty similar to how the traditional
| luminescent (mercury vapor-based) lamps worked.
|
| But different phosphors have different efficiency and
| price. LED lamps were first introduced for interior
| lighting, where sun-like spectrum is welcome. Such LEDs
| were produced en masse and relatively cheaply. So street
| lighting naturally used them, because municipalities
| usually look for the cheapest viable option.
|
| We likely could produce high-power narrow-spectrum orange
| LEDs if there was a large market for the economies of
| scale to kick in. You can buy deep orange LED lamps today
| (look for color temperature 1800K or 1600K, "amber"), but
| they are more expensive, because they are niche.
| josephg wrote:
| > Different color temperatures are produced by different
| mixes of phosphors.
|
| We can make LED light _appear_ to be any given colour by
| mixing multiple LEDs. But mixed colour isn 't the same as
| pure colour, made from a single spectra of light. Nor is
| it the same as true broad spectrum light - like we get
| from black-body radiation like the sun, or a tungsten
| bulb.
|
| Its hard to tell the difference just by looking at a
| light. But different kinds of lights - even lights which
| look the same colour - will change what objects actually
| look like. And they probably have different effects on
| our sleep cycle and our low light vision. I was in a room
| once lit only by sodium vapour lights. The lights were
| yellow, but everything in the room (including me)
| appeared to be in greyscale. It was uncanny.
|
| This is part of the reason why LED lights are still
| looked down on by a lot of old school photographers and
| film makers. Skin doesn't look as good under cheap LED
| lights.
| adrian_b wrote:
| For light with a narrow spectrum, it is possible to make
| LEDs that emit that light with high-efficiency, for any
| color inside 2 ranges, one from near infrared to yellow
| (corresponding to semiconductor phosphides and arsenides)
| and one from blue to near ultraviolet (corresponding to
| semiconductor nitrides).
|
| Only green LEDs have worse efficiency, because they must
| be made with semiconductors for which optimum efficiency
| is attained at either lower or higher light frequencies.
|
| Lamps using high-efficiency amber LEDs with about the
| same color with sodium lamps could be made at an
| energetic efficiency at least double to that of white LED
| lamps.
|
| The double factor comes from the visual sensitivity being
| double for the light at sodium color than for ideal white
| light.
|
| In reality the energetic efficiency of such LED lamps
| should be more than double, because they do not have
| losses caused by conversion through fluorescence.
| functional_dev wrote:
| seafoam green choice was also influenced by eye rest
| studies... since our eyes are most sensitive to middle
| wavelengths. just keep the room dimmer without losing
| detail. It reduces fatigue for operators on long shifts.
| scubadude wrote:
| Modern street lighting provides a way clearer view of the
| scene imo than the old sodium lighting. Maybe it's just
| brighter now.
| LtWorf wrote:
| It's about 100000x brighter and if your bedroom is next
| to a street lamp, good luck getting some sleep.
| albumen wrote:
| Blackout curtains.
| 6510 wrote:
| After they swapped out the lights at my job I couldn't
| sleep after night shifts. It's pitch dark but the biology
| thinks it was noon an hour ago.
| LtWorf wrote:
| But i want sunlight in the morning?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://shop.delos.com/products/philips-wake-up-light-
| hf3650...
| LtWorf wrote:
| "i want a wife" "here's a blow up doll. Totally the same
| thing"
| Citizen_Lame wrote:
| Best we can do in this economy.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Inadequate.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| When I was an medical intern back in the day and worked
| 24 hour shifts every third day, I bought a roll of thick
| black vinyl and taped it to the window frame. 0.0 light
| got through.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Providing a day-like view of the scene should not be the
| primary goal of nighttime lighting.
| mcfly_c-137 wrote:
| The monochromatic light emitted from sodium lamps is also
| close to the peak sensitivity of the human eye. Colours are
| not distinguishable, but contrast is much enhanced compared
| to "cooler" light sources.
|
| *edit: but it's the overwhelmingly larger lifespan (20-30k
| hrs) that led to the wide adoption as streetlights. And I
| guess, the same is true for the change to led today,
| because of less power consumption.
| eastbound wrote:
| Sodium lamps were deemed dangerous for driving" because
| they made it difficult for drivers to distinguish shapes,
| since they were different from day shapes. A kid in
| bright 1980ies colors (Little Red Hood) would look black
| under those lights.
|
| LED was presented as a sharp improvement because of the
| large spectrum of white light.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The sodium lamps are in fact safer for driving, because
| they preserve drivers' night vision, which improves
| visibility into the shadows, and because they cause less
| glare.
|
| What they aren't good for is LED manufacturers' bottom
| line, and the lighting industry spent a lot of lobbying
| money to entice friendly politicians to heavily subsidize
| them with public infrastructure budgets, with those
| subsidies then misleadingly sold to the public as
| "efficient" and "environmentally friendly".
|
| They're also not very good for reading the newspaper or
| doing critical color analysis. Thankfully such tasks do
| not need to be done at night in the middle of the street.
| duskdozer wrote:
| That would make sense. Otherwise I have no idea how
| people wouldn't have noticed how much more difficult it
| makes seeing anything outside of the sharp cutoff of the
| light cone (or, of course, for the person being dazzled
| on the other side).
| jacobolus wrote:
| It's _not_ especially close to the peak sensitivity of
| the human eye (in either bright or dim conditions), but
| that 's entirely okay. The goal should be to not affect
| people's level of dark adaptation.
|
| If you use shorter ("bluer") wavelengths, as happens with
| white LEDs which consist of a blue LED + phosphor, it
| causes people's eyes to become bright adapted and
| effective night vision is ruined, causing people to have
| much worse vision in the shadows.
|
| Also, if you use bluer light, the lights themselves cause
| dramatically more glare in peripheral vision, because the
| shorter-wavelength-sensitive "S" cone cells and rod cells
| are mostly absent from the fovea (center of the retina),
| and prevalent in the outer areas of the retina. This is
| why LED headlamps on cars are so obnoxious for drivers
| going the opposite direction.
|
| Also, the LEDs clobber people's circadian rhythms and are
| extremely disruptive to wildlife.
|
| Finally, the light pollution caused by the LEDs is much
| worse for seeing the stars, which is maybe not as
| important as the other harms, but still kind of sad.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > The goal should be to not affect people's level of dark
| adaptation.
|
| Wouldn't that be red light? But night scenes illuminated
| in red light have the side effect of looking
| nightmarish..
| ijk wrote:
| That's not necessarily a downside for traffic safety,
| though. Though I imagine someone must have studied the
| effects of various wavelengths on drivers...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Advertisers definitely did - there's (some) money in
| billboards, but only as long as you don't kill your
| prospective customers.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Red light would be even better for affecting the dark
| adaptation, but it has other disadvantages, like much
| worse energetic efficiency and lower visual resolution.
|
| Yellow light a.k.a. amber light around the sodium
| emission line is a good compromise between energy
| efficiency, visual resolution and dark adaptation.
| adrian_b wrote:
| > It's not especially close to the peak sensitivity
|
| The sensitivity at sodium light is above 75% of the peak
| human vision (photopic) sensitivity.
|
| This is a very small difference in light sensitivity. For
| example in the case of many sources of red light or blue
| light the sensitivity can be 5 to 10 times lower than the
| peak sensitivity.
|
| Moreover, a perfect source of white light cannot achieve
| a better sensitivity than around 37%, i.e. less than half
| of the efficiency of an ideal source of monochromatic
| light at the sodium emission line.
|
| Therefore the fact that currently LED lamps and low-
| pressure sodium lamps have about the same energy
| efficiency is caused by the LED lamps having a higher
| photonic efficiency and a lower threshold voltage (caused
| by a P-N junction voltage instead of the ionization
| potential of sodium), which compensate the disadvantage
| of using white light. A monochromatic LED lamp with the
| same color as the sodium lamps could have an energy
| efficiency at least double over the white LED lamps.
| AriedK wrote:
| The power savings are minor btweeen LED and low presssure
| sodium lamps. The LED streetlights emit light along the
| full spectrum, the sodium lamps only at 589 nm. The LEDs
| are more controllable so smart dimming ( when there are
| no cars) is a perceived advantage.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are 2 kinds of sodium lamps, low-pressure and high-
| pressure.
|
| The low-pressure lamps emit monochromatic light and they
| have not only the advantage of long life but they are
| also the only other source of light that matches the
| energy efficiency of converting electrical energy to
| light of the LED lamps.
|
| So replacing low-pressure lamps with LED lamps does not
| produce any significant economic effects, it was
| justified only by the supposed advantage of enabling
| color vision.
|
| However in many places high-pressure sodium lamps have
| been preferred, which have a wider spectrum, so they
| allow some very poor color discrimination. The high-
| pressure lamps have a lower efficiency than LED lamps, so
| replacing them was justified by energy savings.
|
| Outdoors at night, I prefer the monochromatic low-
| pressure sodium lamps, but sadly LED lamps have replaced
| them in most places.
| rapnie wrote:
| In my area and esp. in the countryside they have green
| led lighting on various roads as an innovation, with the
| reasoning that is both least disturbing to wildlife, and
| best for human vision to see sharply. The light color
| takes some getting used to, but I am quite a fan of it.
| Esp. when cycling at home at night through the fields it
| makes things seem extra serene and peaceful.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps may be the color they are
| due to physics, but you don't have to put Na or Hg in those
| tubes. I don't know but Li, K, Rb, Cs should, Mg, Ca, Sr,
| Ba probably also work, but nobody make lamps with those
| elements.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are 4 important properties for the substance used
| in a gas-discharge lamp.
|
| 1. For a sufficient gas pressure in the lamp, the
| substance must be either a gas or a metal with low
| boiling temperature, so that it will be vaporized by an
| electrical discharge.
|
| 2. The gas must not react chemically with the enclosure
| and with the electrodes, which prevents the use of most
| gases except noble gases and metallic vapors. Except for
| noble gases and metallic vapors, the lamps using other
| substances must not have electrodes, so they need a more
| complex and less efficient electronic system for
| producing a high-frequency AC discharge, e.g. using a
| magnetron from microwave ovens.
|
| 3. The ionization potential must be low for a good energy
| efficiency. Alkaline metals have low ionization
| potentials and low boiling temperatures, so they are
| better than noble gases and other metals.
|
| 4. The color of the light must be one where the
| sensitivity and the visual acuity are high. This narrows
| the choice to yellow light, i.e. to sodium, between the
| alkaline metals.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The lamps that use alkaline metal vapor instead of a noble
| gas have better energy efficiency, because of a lower
| ionization potential, which leads to a lower voltage drop
| on the lamp. Therefore they have been preferred for
| lighting instead of neon lamps and the like.
|
| Among alkaline metals, sodium is the cheapest, so it was a
| logical choice.
|
| However, the fact that it produces light of a suitable
| color was a happy coincidence. If sodium had produced
| violet light, like potassium, and potassium had produced
| yellow light, potassium would have been chosen for lamps.
|
| So among the criteria for choosing sodium for lamps, the
| color of the light was as important as cost, ionization
| potential and vapor pressure.
| kmacdough wrote:
| Two things can be true. And often that's precisely when we
| lose out with modern engineering that is much more single-
| minded.
|
| > Their only advantage...
|
| How are you coming to this conclusion?! Their warmer has
| very meaningful effects on processing, attention and other
| visual effects as is the point of the discussion in the
| first place. It's not clear what makes you so sure that
| color differentiation is essential and the other effects
| are irrelevant.
|
| No I absolutely don't know what matters. But it seems
| neither do you.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| The posted article seems like credulous commentary, though.
| anthk wrote:
| I miss the aesthetics of the support for the street light
| themselves too. In Spain they used to be curved with a
| 'crown' shaped top, looking 'classical' and less hard for the
| brain as straight lines make the brain really tired. We are
| used to fractal and curved designs from nature, not to fake
| perspective points in every city full of straight lines.
|
| These could just reuse the current LED lamps by just
| redesigning the socket. Altough the materials should be
| changed as the old ones (I think they were ceramic and/or
| concrete?) could cause serious harms if they felt over random
| people walking around. And, yes, they can even break concrete
| pavement like nothing.
|
| I remember hearing a falling lamp+case near my home and upon
| falling to the sidewalk it sounded like a bomb, I am no
| kidding, even the floor vibrated and the windows nearly
| crashed. These things were really sturdy, either concrete or
| cement. I would love the same design but in magnesium, which
| can be lighter and maybe as durable, altough I know
| ceramic/concrete can withstand anything.
| justonceokay wrote:
| I wouldn't change it for the world. I grew up in Minneapolis
| and moved to Seattle, so I went in a single night from sodium
| lights everywhere in a 500 mile radius to LED. It feels safer
| (subjective), more pleasant to perform tasks in, and less
| depressing. I should note I care 0% what the animals think of
| the whole affair.
|
| This is especially important at high latitudes where for
| months of the year the street lights provide more
| illumination than the sun for most working people.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Another effect observed with LED street lights, especially in
| my area, is that many have shifted from white light to purple
| as a widespread manufacturing flaw causes their phosphor
| coating to fail.
|
| The purple lights evoke a vaporwave/synthwave aesthetic like
| I'm in a bad 80s scifi movie. Unintentionally appropriate
| given the general state of things.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| This could do with a little better colour design, but let me
| just give you this to look at:
|
| https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/
|
| Yeah. Skeuomorphism isn't dead. Buttons need to look like
| buttons. Sliders need to look like sliders.
|
| You just know looking at it that when you click on the little
| buttons, they pop in slightly as the LEDs go on and off, right?
| Does it look cheesy and 80s and dated? Yeah it sounds cheesy
| and 80s and dated too.
| FpUser wrote:
| Modern designers do not give rat's ass about ergonomics and
| functionality. Their ultimate design is an empty screen with
| some light gray color on white text and inability to
| distinguish between active (can interact with) and info
| elements
| cade wrote:
| Ha. I didn't realize until I checked the comments that I worked
| with Beth in Nashville too! Not sure what that says about how I
| consume content these days... but she's delightful.
|
| Two of my favorite classes in college were Color Studies and
| Typography. As a long time back end engineer, I would encourage
| anyone unfamiliar to spend at least a little bit of time
| looking into both. If you're at all intrigued, treat yourself
| to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_S
| t.... It will forever change how you look at text (hopefully
| for the better!).
| anonu wrote:
| Some of the old retired US aircraft carriers have their control
| rooms painted this color.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _He painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it
| would make him go mad._
|
| _And?_ Did it?
| vintermann wrote:
| I suppose that's up to us to judge
| bluedino wrote:
| Have always been a fan of colors like that for my desktop
| background. Maybe because it's calming and I don't realize it?
|
| I'm not sure if it started with the teal from Windows 95's
| default color (hex codes vary based on Google searches), or if it
| was a purple-ish color from a classic Mac from school.
|
| To this day, my work Mac is teal and my personal is purple.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| #81D8D0 club, represent!
|
| Tiffany green is a Top10 /hn/topbar color _for a reason_.
| buildbot wrote:
| Mmmm it is quite nice
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| You immediately know when you're logged out (because the
| topbar goes from soothing to _bright orange_ ).
| hkleppe wrote:
| what, can I change the topbar color?
| hkleppe wrote:
| aha, so I need more karma
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| You'll need 251+ karma _to do so_.
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors>
|
| Apparently _tiffany green_ is only a Top50 contender, these
| days... a few years ago it had been Top10 (I hadn 't checked
| again until _this comment_ ).
| kleton wrote:
| Because chromium III oxide is a very light-fast pigment
| cmoski wrote:
| Old school SCADA screens that I first saw had a similar green
| background.
| carabiner wrote:
| Su-27 fighter cockpit is known for its turquoise paneling that
| supposedly is to promote calm.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah I was about to say similar pastel green colors crops up in
| a lot of Soviet control rooms too.
| karlgkk wrote:
| > We once went on a tour to spot bald eagles in West Tennessee,
| and upon arrival, a woman with fluffy hair in the state park
| bathroom told us she had seen 113 bald eagles the day before. We
| ended up seeing (counts on one hand)...2.
|
| As a semi professional eagle enjoyer, if the day before was trash
| day, then she might have been telling the truth. I'm not joking,
| they have bald eagle proofed dumpsters in Alaska.
|
| They're basically smart seagulls with talons.
| jaggederest wrote:
| We took a trip to Alaska via RV, and were parked at a roadside.
| I got up at 11:30pm at "night" (broad daylight) to use the
| restroom and was so annoyed by the seagulls I went outside to
| yell at them.
|
| It was eagles fighting over a salmon. They genuinely do sound
| and act exactly like seagulls.
| csours wrote:
| And here I assumed they sounded like red-tailed hawks!
| karlgkk wrote:
| I love watching them interact. I ended up ditching a show in
| Alaska to sit in a grocery parking lot and watched eagles
| quarrel for almost two hours. They're great.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| TL;DR: because mid-20th-century designers believed soft green
| reduced eye strain and improved focus.
|
| Basically the same nonsensical belief as in regard the dark mode
| nowadays.
|
| I don't even believe it's true. Green is just an army colour,
| that's pretty much it. Army uses army colours. Mystery solved.
| amelius wrote:
| It's the color of plants. A field of grass. Etc.
|
| Maybe it even works better with the color of a clear blue sky
| above it.
|
| Anyway, it's intuitive and not rocket science.
| Theodores wrote:
| As the son of a machine tools salesman, I call the article
| bullshit. Sometimes things just need to be painted and
| sometimes you just need that WW2 surplus paint to do the job,
| with the colour not mattering one bit.
|
| With anything, an academic can thread together a theory that
| neatly joins the dots to sound feasible, but my bet is that 99%
| of all engineers are stronger at physics than color theory.
| vajrabum wrote:
| Uh, I think they didn't use WW2 surplus anything when they
| build Oak Ridge and Hanford before the end of WW2. I also
| think given that those two plants were key bits of the
| Manhattan Project that they didn't cheap out on anything. And
| the color dude was in fact hired by DuPont who built those
| two plants and adopted his theories because they increased
| measured factory productivity and safety. Lastly the OG dude
| in the article was not an engineer. In fact he was an art
| school dropout who was very interested in color. So no on the
| no.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Why do doctors wear green?
| mc2112 wrote:
| Green is the opposite color of red (blood) on the color wheel
| and it was supposed to reduce visual fatigue. I think green
| scrubs have fallen out of favor in many places, but that was
| one of the prevailing reasons.
| prewett wrote:
| I think the reason that I like dark mode is that I have had
| floaters in my eyes since at least age 14. They stand out
| against a bright white window background, but I don't notice
| them at all on a dark window with light text.
|
| Or maybe it's just because that's how IBM PC DOS, BASICA, etc.,
| as well as the VT100, VT220, VT300s that I used did it.
|
| (Also, I think displays should paint with light, and having a
| white background is painting darkness on a computer screen.
| It's particularly bad for presentation slides. A light
| background just screams "PowerPoint presentation".)
| Terr_ wrote:
| Seeing all those two-tone walls with green blow and cream above,
| I bet it isn't coincidental that those tones resemble plants
| under an overcast outdoor sky.
|
| Either because of unconscious choice, or because some designer
| theorized that people would be biologically primed to prefer it.
| d-us-vb wrote:
| The purpose stated in the article in the mind of Birren was to
| reduce eye strain. I don't think it's so much that humans
| "prefer" it as such, more that we're very well adapted to work
| in environments with lots of it.
| Rantenki wrote:
| While I am sure there are stylistic reasons for using that color,
| there is another common reason why you see blue-green colors in
| paint, especially in older industrial environments: zinc
| chromate/phosphate corrosion protective coatings. Zinc chromate
| primer is the color you see on the interior surfaces of some
| aircraft, to inhibit corrosion. Zinc phosphate is more of a gray
| in most cases, although varying paint chemistries result in a
| spectrum between those two, with seafoam nearly smack in the
| middle.
|
| These are still available today, although the chromate version
| seems less popular for general use due to toxicity, especially (I
| assume) in the case of a fire.
|
| I have painted quite a few bits of sheet metal with a sea-foam-
| ish blue-green/gray paint back in the day (30 years or so ago). I
| don't recall the manufacturer, but it was a zinc conversion
| coating in nearly exactly that seafoam color, which has probably
| stolen at least a few years of my life expectancy. The same
| company sold other paints in a sickly mustard yellow, and close
| to fire-engine red, all with slightly different chemistries, I
| assume for different base metals.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I remember reading a long time ago about why barns / shipping
| containers are dark red. and IIRC it's simply because it's a
| very similar tone to iron oxide and thus the dye was cheapest
| to produce.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Not quite right.
|
| Iron oxide is anti-microbial. So a barn painted with it as a
| pigment will last longer vs mold and such.
|
| It's also why large ships all have that red paint color below
| the waterline. In that case it's copper oxide, which helps
| slow barnacle growth and similar.
|
| Back in the age of sail they even went as far as copper sheet
| cladding to make the wooden hulls last longer. Copper oxide
| pigment emerged toward the end of the age of sail / beginning
| of the steamship era as a more practical alternative.
| HerbManic wrote:
| This reminding me of something my granddad demonstrated once.
|
| He used to work on yachts a fair bit and over the years he
| noticed the fading patterns for different colour paints.
|
| Yellow paint would fade, red paint would fade. But if you mixed
| them 50/50 into orange, it wouldn't fade. That's why they had
| so many orange boats in the bay. Figure that one out.
| Citizen_Lame wrote:
| It comes down to each pigment acting as a UV shield for the
| other. Paint fades because specific wavelengths of light
| (mostly UV and high-energy visible light) break down the
| chemical bonds in pigment molecules. The key is that
| different pigments are vulnerable to different wavelengths.
|
| Yellow pigment absorbs blue and violet light. That's what
| makes it look yellow, it reflects the longer wavelengths and
| soaks up the shorter ones. But the UV and violet radiation
| it's absorbing is also what gradually destroys it.
|
| Red pigment does something similar but across a different
| band, it absorbs greens and shorter wavelengths, and that
| absorption is what degrades it over time.
|
| When you mix them 50/50 into orange, each pigment is
| absorbing the wavelengths that would have destroyed the other
| one.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > There's a lot of U.S. history that's awful and indefensible
|
| Sure. But this is not one those things.
| whostolemyhat wrote:
| Did you read the next sentence?
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| That's exactly the point. What "this" did you think was being
| referred to?
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Yes, of course. Let me clarify:
|
| The implication of the quoted sentence is that the U.S.
| dropping atomic bombs on Japan was awful and indefensible.
| The author then transitions to "but I want to talk about part
| of the Manhattan project that isn't really related to the
| bombings." What other explanation would there be for
| inserting this comment about U.S. history?
|
| My comment was addressing the defensibility of the bombings.
| They may have been awful, but they were fully defensible.
| Japan was the aggressor, and all indications were that both
| the U.S. and Japan were going to see millions of casualties
| as part of an invasion of the home islands.
| wredcoll wrote:
| I'm not sure how much it really matters but it is mildly
| annoying when people's brains just shut off when they hear
| atomic/nuclear.
|
| It's perfectly reasonable to make an argument that they
| were "not needed" in terms of ending ww2, it's much, much
| more difficult to argue that fewer people would have died
| if they weren't used.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I'm with you.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > "The Manhattan Project created the nuclear bomb that caused
| extreme devastation in Japan and ended the war. There's a lot
| of U.S. history that's awful and indefensible."
|
| That's one hell of a non-sequitur. In the immortal words of
| Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what she thinks
| it means. "The US ended the worst war in human history.
| Indefensible!"
| pbohun wrote:
| This makes me think of the color scheme of Plan9. I think they
| chose that color design for similar reasons.
| imglorp wrote:
| What's also interesting is the Russians adopted a similar color
| for aircraft cockpits, eg this MiG 31.
| https://cdn.jetphotos.com/full/2/75332_1265484412.jpg
|
| Meanwhile the Yanks stayed with mil-spec gray on a similar ship,
| the F-15:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F-15_Eagle_Cockpit.jpg
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I remember when I first started out in a job that I should have a
| green poster nearby to look at to "relax your eyes" every now and
| then.
| bloak wrote:
| Also hospitals, though I think it's called "spinach-leaf green"
| then.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Yes, a feature of the movie "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"
| is a sort of sickly green.
|
| I think hospitals have moved entirely away from green, probably
| because of its association with industry and asylum use.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Why don't we do these things anymore? My office is all grey white
| desks.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| I had our maintenance department custom paint my beige desk
| black when I moved into my office.
| markdown wrote:
| LOL I just bought a can of Dulux Sea Foam and one of Dulux Sea
| Foam Quarter yesterday
| bronlund wrote:
| "Make a color theme for my terminal based on the Birren and
| DuPont master color safety code for the industrial plant
| industry."
| dopatraman wrote:
| the Burt Reynolds poster
| dubya wrote:
| Definitely Tom Selleck, aka Magnum PI.
| skyberrys wrote:
| It's a color of green reminiscent of Tiffany blue, I mean both
| colors have the intent of the original color but at the same time
| there is a well washed feel to them. It's both unnatural and
| expected for the function of these colors.
| microtherion wrote:
| I wonder whether that was the inspiration for the extensive use
| of green in the interiors of Severance.
| ktokarev wrote:
| good one, UX matters indeed
| abcde666777 wrote:
| Funny - one of those things you don't really wonder about until
| someone points it out, but which proves pretty interesting once
| you're aware of it.
| rodface wrote:
| Thank you for this share, because it rings close to another
| fascination of mine: the shade of green/teal that is the panel
| color of a great many Soviet aircraft cockpits. It's not the same
| as the shade of these industrial control panels[1], but it seems
| to me that they are in a family together. I would include the
| Windows 95 default background color in that same family; I find
| it relaxing enough that I still use it today. :)
|
| [1]https://www.google.com/images?q=soviet%20aircraft%20cockpits
| 6bb32646d83d wrote:
| I was just visiting the cold war era nuclear ICBM control room
| bunker in Arizona and noticed this color everywhere. Timely
| article!
|
| https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54f84e69e4b021...
| 6510 wrote:
| Between real jobs I once worked at a factory that paid the bare
| minimum wages, gave zero hour contracts and had the most unstable
| work hours I've ever seen. People who weren't needed showed up
| only to be send home, people who weren't planned for the day were
| suppose to be ready to jump in the entire day only to not be
| called for 3 weeks. They did shit like send one out of a team of
| 6 home just to see if 5 people could still do it. They would go
| out of their way to keep up for example for 2-4 hours but
| couldn't so someone else was called in for the last two hours.
|
| I asked about the horizontal colored bars painted on the wall in
| the lunch room. It was the strangest selection of colors. Each
| bar about a fist width. It seemed someone went out of their way
| to invent the most boring bland colors possible.
|
| They told me the factory had spend over 100 k on a color expert
| to increase productivity. Everyone who worked there for some time
| knew this.
|
| I thought I'd observe the effect. Someone was released from the
| factory floor for 10 minutes because they by accident worked
| enough hours in a row to be entitled to a lunch break, in their
| own time of course.
|
| They sat down at a table carefully positioned to look straight at
| the color bars. And then it started! I could see on their face
| their internal dialog as if talking with the hundred thousand
| euro color consultant. The sandwich went only half way up to
| their mouth and they slipped into a catatonic state looking at
| the colors.
|
| It was facinating, I just had to see more. Turned out half the
| factory had this moment with this colored wall!
|
| I didn't have to ask them what that expression was. I could look
| at the wall myself and the internal dialog stated immediately:
| _How the fuck do they expect me to pay my bills if I have to wait
| by the phone all week but only get two 3 hour shifts? Why did
| they have to spend a hundred thousand on colors to make me more
| productive?_
|
| It was impossible to think anything else. It was almost a
| blessing to go back to the high speed conveyor belt. If I didn't
| see it myself I wouldn't believe color theory works in magical
| ways.
| themafia wrote:
| The poster of Magnum P.I. really tied the place together dude.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My mom had that exact poster in her home-office.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > I designed a font called "Parts List"
|
| ... that just screams "green plastic stencil ruler"
| beedle_mcdeedle wrote:
| I work as an automation technician for my province's electrical
| utility in Quebec Canada and all the hydro dams in my region
| still use this color for the control room paneling! I work in and
| around this color every day and it hasn't gotten old yet. The
| dams have been around for nearly a century and I've always
| appreciated their old industrial vibe.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Growing up in Los Alamos, it's not just the lab that adhered to
| this color standard. Everything that had any vague connection to
| government, be it the post office, hospital, county council
| building, public access TV station, and schools were all colored
| in these various colors. And many things that weren't connected
| directly still used them, likely because they bought paint as
| surplus. One of a few elevators in town, part of a small shopping
| center, was sea foam, as were the lamp posts along downtown
| streets, and finally, the doors in the Posse Shack were also
| green, but that's likely because they were directly taken from
| the lab
| pvab3 wrote:
| Not even just Los Alamos. It was a very common color for
| schools and hospitals
| paradox460 wrote:
| When we moved away, the new schools and such didn't have that
| color. Either the grey fad was just taking root at that time,
| or it hadn't penetrated the tri cities (home to the Hanford
| project) quite as well as it did Los Alamos
| anthk wrote:
| The old forniture in my Elementary school (the whole 90's)
| had that green tone until ~1998-1999.
| userbinator wrote:
| To me, it's very evocative of mid-century industrial design.
| Detroit Diesel painted their engines a similar color too,
| although theirs is called "Alpine Green". ("Seafoam" brings to
| mind the engine additive too.)
| vharuck wrote:
| >In the fall of 1919, Faber Birren entered the Art Institute at
| the University of Chicago, only to drop out in the spring of 1921
| to commit himself to self-education in color, as such a program
| didn't exist.
|
| The German word for color is "Farbe," which is an anagram of this
| guy's name. So I'm chalking one more point up to the universe
| being a simulation written by a cheeky developer.
| ydj wrote:
| Funny, when I got tired of trying to find a nice desktop
| background I just started using a solid color of muted blue or
| green. I never read about this specific usage of colors before
| but I bet I saw something somewhere that clued me in on this
| color.
| biofox wrote:
| Reminding me that early Windows versions used to have this
| colour as the default desktop colour -- and I remember seeing
| similar tones on Mac and Unix desktops in the 90s.
|
| https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/user-interface-sof...
| jnellis wrote:
| The 68 Ford Thunderbird (w/ suicide doors.) Mustangs also came in
| this color. https://imgur.com/a/BbzHVMn
| fortran77 wrote:
| Wait, what? Ending the war in Japan was "indefensible"?
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I went to an old engineering school for grad school, all the
| older buildings had this color scheme.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Great discussion on colour theory but I think it skips over the
| fact that chemistry and economics were also real constraints.
| Paints that don't fade easily, chemically inert, durable etc and
| can be produced in enormous volume are not that common. Practical
| stuff like, how easy does it catch fire, do solvents degrade it.
| Most important: is it CHEAP?
|
| Also by 1944 there would have been a ready made supply chain due
| to demand from the navy, which would have picked it for similar
| reasons and consumed it in enormous volume.
|
| I think, practically, control rooms are chrome oxide green (you
| get to add as much titanium as you like - thats cheap as dirt too
| EDIT: it would have been lead actually in the 40s) for much the
| same reason that barns are red.
| justonceokay wrote:
| I doubt the manhattan project had an issue funding paint
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Think for a minute about why they worked in shacks.
|
| Also worth noting that Birren was a paid consultant for
| DuPont - the company that made the paint. From that
| perspective alone you would kinda expect he is gonna pick
| colours they already produce reliably at scale.
|
| He also consulted for army, coast guard and navy so whatever
| colours you pick for hazard marking in an industrial setting
| have to be _vaguely_ congruent or you're going to cause
| accidents.
| rippeltippel wrote:
| Many primary school classrooms in Italy had walls painted in that
| same colour, likely for the same reason.
| ourmandave wrote:
| At the end...
|
| _PS: I have an old friend whose dad still works at the Uranium
| plant in Oak Ridge. I told him that I was surprised that almost
| all of the facilities had been torn down, and he just looked at
| me straight in the face and said, "Who said it's actually gone?"
| Noted._
| razkaplan wrote:
| My autonomous YT show picked this thread up for today's episode
| -- worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61BRALSFJxU
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| Lots of old machinery from the era (Mills, Lathes, and such) also
| carried these colors.
|
| Truly beautiful.
| theodorethomas wrote:
| Apollo Command Module interior colour is similar, and gorgeous.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| I reported this to 99pi as an Article of Interest
| NoSalt wrote:
| I was in the Air Force back in the late '80s, and SO MANY of the
| old equipment I worked with fit quite nicely into this color
| scheme. I can almost smell the old electronics now. It also
| reminds me of the AWESOME aesthetic that is the nixie tube.
| mprovost wrote:
| It looks like almost the same colour of those David Clark
| headsets which seem to be ubiquitous in airplane cockpits or
| helicopters. It's even the background of their corporate logo.
| bensonn wrote:
| It looked like Google Maps to me so I made a comparison. What is
| old is new again? https://imgur.com/a/b6HCx78
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