[cynicalsecurity]

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.

[prewett]

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".)

[amelius]

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.

[Ylpertnodi]

Why do doctors wear green?

[mc2112]

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.

[Theodores]

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]

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.