Turns out there were several reasons for it, according to the people who worked for the company that was once a leading manufacturer of beige computers -- IBM.
The book also talks about how IBM wanted the ThinkPad's TrackPoint eraser-head mouse to be blue, because that was IBM's signature color ("Big Blue") and because as I mentioned in the video, red was only supposed to be used for emergency stop buttons. The ThinkPad design team got around this by insisting that the TrackPoint was actually "magenta", not red, and they held their ground through arguments about the definition of magenta, so ultimately it was approved.
Interesting... I know that IBM also made a desktop keyboard with that TrackPoint later on in their Model M line, if I'm not mistaken, I remember LGR doing a review video on that.
When it was originally designed in the late 1980s, the TrackPoint was originally intended for desktop keyboards, as a competitor to the mouse. But the mouse was already so popular by the time that IBM abandoned the idea, until it was revived for use in the ThinkPad (and ultimately later in desktop keyboards, as well).
Good to know. Also, I was reminded that it was the M13 Keyboard that had this, I knew it was something in the M line, but...yeah. Couldn't even find ONE of those on eBay, unfortunately.
VWestlife Here’s my funny story about the Trackpoint button. My then 3 yr. old nephew pulled that thing off the Thinkpad and it was missing for maybe a week or two. When the kid started crying and complaining about some pain. His mother took him to the doctor. The pediatrician at first sight knew exactly what’s wrong and it also comes a distinct smell that something was stuck up his nostrils. It was the missing Trackpoint button. It was funny when they asked him how did it up inside his nose? He said “I don’t know. I didn’t put it there”
Cyranek Interestingly enough though, this video still beats 80% of the other content on CZcams (increase that to 99.9% for channels with more than 500k subscribers).
You have yourself to blame for watching it and then commenting, lol j/k. You never quite know what the hell will be interesting until you try it, it would appear...
Or people playing video games and telling us exactly what they're doing."I'm going out" "I'll run to that place" etc., also reading the texts from the game. CZcams is for functionally illiterates.
This color was most often referred to as "putty". In that era, I did alot of bulk purchasing of cubicle parts, shelving, desks and accessories, and that was the predominant color!
Ah, so it IS true! I had heard somewhere that some kind of unspecified DIN standard caused everything to turn beige, but I never knew whether that was true or not. Nice video!
Chyrosran22 Siemens and Brawn did some great office designs, Apple is selling you that design now, a blue print copy of the user interface of any Brawn product. In the 80th, computer systems were still massive ugly junk. All the safety regulation are from a later area. What if parties as Google start hiring designers, or do something good? now is the Free crap online area, not the best of times for high tech!
Yeah! I remember having some OLD computer equipment that was originally white, and coming back to it years later and noticing it had yellowed. Apparently this is due to a flame retardant embedded in the plastic that made it turn yellow when it decayed.
The funny thing is: The complete opposite was the case for cameras, audio equipment and home electronics. In the 70s they were still grey or beige, by the mid-80s they switched to black (because it was considered “the color of professionals”) and by the mid-90s they started to produce grey/silver cases again (VCRs, TVs, etc.).
I remember the IBM ThinkPad. My brother used to have it since I was still in my late teens when we have internet connection like a modem, but I still remember Windows 98 which was much of the same as the Windows 95, but it had features than the Windows 95 did at the time. We had AOL, but not anymore. I remember the voice of AOL where he says "You got mail!" Those were great times when we had AOL. I also remember the Apple IIgs when I was in school back in the early 1990's when schools had the Apple IIe computers for fun and learning games. I used to played "Oregon Trail", "Pick-A-Dilly Pair", "Wheel Of Fortune" and others. I missed those days when we had computers.
Reminds me of a scene in Americal Psycho, where couple of managers were competing over who has the coolest off-white tone of his business card - the egg shell white vs bone white... Having something like a black business card would be considered heresy in these circles.
I just stumbled upon this video and decided to watch. Thank you! I just love odd little bits of arcane info, and this totally fits the bill. Good stuff!
I find it kind of funny that the picture you use for the thumbnail is the IBM PS/2 Lineup, which generally werent beige, but more of an eggshell white. They (for the majority spare a few varieties) didnt yellow over time because they were painted and didnt use the same fireproof plastics that react with UV light.
Great Video. I worked for IBM New Zealand in the 90s. I remember we had a booth at a large computer show and had managed to get some standard PS/2 screens in black to attach to the Thinkpads on display. The crowd went wild!! Every second person visiting the IBM booth wanted to buy a black screen. Pity we only had three.
There was one renegade company in the UK, who preferred black - Sinclair, apart from the ZX80, the rest of the line, ZX81, Spectrum (Timex brand) including their PC Clone (After Amstrad bought their company), was black. I thought they were ahead of their time in design, the Spectrum, with its black case and rainbow decal was sublime...
Today 's computers with ATX power supplies don't really have an off switch. Most power supplies do have an AC power button, but normally most people won't use them. On ATX you have an ordinary low voltage pulse button that sends a signal to you're motherboard. For most people this turn their computer on or off, but you can also set it up so it hibernates you're computer.. However in the AT power supplies days (back when we had ISA expansion slots) you actually used an AC switch to turn the computer on or off. Windows 95 even had a message saying that it was safe to turn off the computer (without the risk of loosing unsaved data to disk). So even on the old computers the red button was for safety. Remember the PC was than something you had on the side. Watering plants or having drinks on top of you're monitor or desktop case made it easy to spill. Liquids and electronics don't mix..
The book is right about the German/European workplace standards but misses the original reason for the standards. It was an ergonomics issue, specifically eye strain and fatigue. Quick History: Large corporations started to buy mainframe computers in the 70's to do all their calculations and predictions. But there was one big problem! All their data was on paper in filing cabinets. So through the 70's and early 80's they hired thousands of file clerks to input paper data into mainframe computers using connected terminals. Each terminal would have a copy holder mounted beside the monitor that held letter/legal size paper. So you had someone sitting in front of a terminal reading black text on a bright white paper all day, every day - across the majority of developed nations - millions of workers. Germany had very strong labor unions and were concerned about worker safety. They regulated many things around workplace ergonomics. In this case, they were concerned about constant refocusing between black text on white and white text on black, since the majority of early keypads were almost all black with white text. So they implemented standards that dictated an acceptable contrast ratio between text and background - that would be a better match for black text on white paper. As desktop computers started to take over from connected terminals the strict contrast ratio was still applied. The result was that in order to sell in Germany (and as a consequence - Europe), computer manufacturers had to follow the standards. At the time, white plastics were too hard to maintain so computer companies used shades of beige with dark text on the keyboards. This is why all computers in the early 80s were beige without exception. By the mid 80's everyone was starting input data directly into their own desktop computers so there was no longer any need to have hundreds of file clerks transcribing large amounts of paper documents. Which meant the core issue went away but the standards hung on - so most computers remained beige through the 1980’s. Of course there were two flaws with the original logic - good typists don't look at the keyboard and all display monitors until the mid 80's were black with green text. But this did not stop Germany/Europe from implementing the standards. Eye fatigue was a big concern at the time and a number of companies were working to improve screen colors to reduce eye fatigue. By the mid eighties screens were all moving to black text on white (Starting with Xerox and Apple). How do I know this? I worked as an industrial designer in the early 1980’s for NCR corporation and we had a design for a new terminal that had a dark facia and keyboard and light body color. We were forced to change to beige to meet the standards and we weren't happy about it. So I was very familiar with this issue. Hope you find this interesting. Graham
don't like retrobrite... all that beautyfull, painstakingly accumulated tan to be removed... makes me sad trying to enjoying sights of old computers when suddenly they start to look new again.
I am really thinking about buying that book. I am a true Thinkpad lover. The law about beige office equipment really seems to be still in use here in Germany, as most desks in schools, especially in the computer cabinets, are beige, (apart from many wood/woodgrain desks). Most office monitors we use do have that ugly color as well. That really was a stupid law in my oppinion
sir, i'd never heard of your channel before, but i got 22 seconds in and i subbed simply because this seems like the kind of channel i will binge watch and learn a lot from :) :) :) :)
Regarding the depiction of the PC in offices on TV during this time, I suspect the fact that they were not turned on has less to do with representing their place in the work environment, and more to do with avoiding distracting screen flicker.
Plenty of TV shows were able to have CRTs on camera without any visible flicker -- all they needed to do was to set the camera's shutter speed to match the monitor's refresh rate.
True, but that is not so simple an adjustment as it sounds. In addition to taking time, which is always at a premium on a TV shoot, it cascades into lighting adjustments. Directors would typically only have reason to bother with this if the CRT was a practical prop. Otherwise, they are spending their time and effort on set dressing rather than whatever is the focus of the scene. The simplest solution would be to just not turn them on.
this video was nice. the guy took the time to elaborately show us the source of his proposition. so much info vids just tell you 'facts' without stating any sources.
In the beginning of the 1990ies germany's retail brand "Escom" wanted to market desktop and tower pcs in solid black color. Perhaps it was even as early as 1989, i do not recall the exact date. And they got beaten by this notorious regulation as well. they had to market their machines as "not for office use" too. but they stood by that, since it was their corporate design from day one as they started "for the home musician/gamer corner". (and later they were the unlucky guys to bought the remains of commodore amiga, folding up their complete business.)
Escom died because of bad economic decisions. They underestimated the speed of development and had way to much old stuff on stock. Their factory outlet was.. big.. very big.. I remember thousands of old graphic cards sold for literally nothing.
TBH the only thing where I'm really picky about the color is my keyboard - something light with durable, high-contrast lettering all the way (a bicolor scheme is nice, too, structures things a bit better). Black makes it hard to make out the spaces between keys under nonideal lighting, resulting in Dancing Letters Syndrome if your eyesight is less than steady and you're not a genuine touch typist, both of which happen to apply. Beige, while of limited optical appeal, is practical in the sense that it won't make a bit of yellowing too obvious. It's scary to think that my keyboard is now over 20 years old (and has been with me for half that) and my (once-white) mouse is pushing on 15.
My Timex/Sinclair 1000 from 1981 is black. One of my buddies at school had a Texas Instruments TI-99 computer that had a brushed aluminum look to it IIRC. And the Atari 800XL was black, too.
I owned two Atari 800 XL systems. I wouldn't call them black by any means. They're mostly beige in fact. I mean, technically the keyboard is black, and the surface, but the bulk of the body of the system is beige. All the accessories are mostly beige (plotter, tape drive, etc.) It's a beige system with black and chrome accents.
I lusted after an Atari 800 back in the day. Mainly for the games, but also because I wanted to program a machine that could do sound and color. Now I am nostalgic for Atari and geek out over seeing the logo in Blade Runner 2049. But my Sinclair still works and I learned how to program with it, and it's black all over, so I gotta love it.
Mister Hat, It wasn't the norm until TI started taking on Commodore 64 and the IBM Peanut in the great computer wars of the early 80's. By the height of it, you could buy one TI, get 9 free. ;-) They had to cut costs of the polished metal by switching to the beige plastic. The TI-99/4A I own and still in the original box, now put away in a closet, has the shiney metal case.
I had wondered this myself, but hadn't looked into it. Our 1991 Gateway 2000 PC had an XT style case, and a big read power switch on the side. I had remembered that commercial as one for a PowerBook! The "tall" screen laptop seemed to be a poke at the L40.
One mistake that David Hill would remember (Together with Gavin O'Hara) is the 2013 "Thinkpad" (Is basically the Edge series) chicklet keyboard scandal that replaced the normal Thinkpad keyboard to a chicklet one and they did a merge of the Trackpoint's buttons into the clickpad just to be closer to an Apple kind of design, thus infuriating any Thinkpad user in that moment that they were buying it from many years Here is the source if you guys wanna read: blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/why-you-should-give-in-to-the-new-thinkpad-keyboard Then he regretted this and the Thinkpad's of these days do have a keyboard that is a normal one instead of a chicklet one iirc
They still use chiclets, but they are by far the best chiclet keyboards available. If only they realized that the perfect laptop keyboard is their chiclet ThinkPad design with the classic T420 layout...
Maybe its just me, but i dont understand how people think the older and newer style keyboards are any different. Neither are mechanically "chicklet", and both are scissor-type. The only difference are the key-face shapes. The travel and feel are the same. iirc if you take the key's out of both new and old style, they are exactly the same underneath. The bigger issue i think is the move from 7 to 6-row. I do agree about the single-clickpad thing, those were disgusting to use.
I had a Commodore CDTV (basically an Amiga 500 with 1MB of RAM and a CD-ROM drive). That was a black computer released in 1991, but it was intended to be placed alongside hifi equipment (i.e. consumer electronics rather than office electronics) hence it was designed not to visually clash with the other kit.
Commodore actually insisted that the CDTV be sold in the audio/video equipment section and not in the computer section of retailers, and that salesmen should make no mention of its Amiga compatibility. Just some of the reasons why it was a total flop...
I bought 2 ThinkPads from a friend for $20 (together). I think one has a Pentium-M and the other is newer, but I don't remember the models. But both are solid, great working systems regardless of their age. I need to see if they use the SATA interface so I can slap an SSD in each.
people who work with precise colors tend to make more errors when using screens with black frames around it thats why many monitors used for color correction have light colored frames around the screens.
The beige answer is = Originally thought that a white plastic would help with increased definition for both the keyboard but more importantly the monitor - particularly as the monitor bezels were quite heavy. BUT the white soon discoloured and so they toned the colour to a non noticeable tone of beige...
Very interesting. I actually like beige/white/pearl colours for computers. I think it looks very neat and easy on the eye for some type of electronics.
I just came here from Technology Connections who was asking why office equipment was always beige. An interesting video about something I never realised. The funny thing is that back in the 80s a friend had this most amazing Psychedelic pattern office chair. He said that back in the early 70s it was standard issue for Britain's Government owned Post Office Telephones, who obviously wanted to appear to not be stuck in the 1950s. p.s back in the Noughties I had a really nice, matt black IBM monitor.
I've owned many brands of laptop and since I bought a Thinkpad, it's all I buy now. You should check out Louis Rossman's take on the 25th anniversary thinkpad before buying that though.
Paul Reiser was the celebrity chosen to be the pitchman in the marketing material for a top end company, looking to go in a bold new direction, to have their laptop brand stand out from the competition? Offering the ThinkPad in black with the red TrackPoint center button instead of a touch pad wasn't the boldest decision made by I.B.M., regarding the ThinkPad. He actually did a number of spots for them and other products later on, after the ThinkPad campaign success, and got himself a lot of exposure that boosted his T.V./movie career because of it.
As I write this, there are already 147 comments posted, and I haven't read them all, so my comment may be repetitive. I also have not read the book, so it's possible that it is mentioned there that the real reason for "beige" computers is that personal computers were introduced at the height of the popularity of "almond" desktop telephones, and desktop computers were supposed to match that color. IBM was considered the best brand of desktop computer for business, and all other brands were trying to capture some of IBM's market share. Thus came the proliferation of various shades of beige. In fact, black telephones were considered "old school," and no computer manufacturer wanted to share in that characterization. As desktop telephones moved away from almond (or vanished altogether,) the need for beige computers was eliminated.
I saved up 20$ and told my mom to use the next two weeks allowance and I bought a Tandy 1000 RL for 50$ any tips to help me with service or any other help?
when every I think about the old white/beige computers. I think about how people who would smoke near them and that would turn them piss yellow or brown from the nicotine.
ModPallet some yellowed without anyone smoking near them, ironicly, because they had an additive in the plastic to make them fire retardant. Same goes for those other yellowing beige boxes from the 90s, the SNES.
Olivetti PCs from this period were grey. On one occasion I was backed into a corner for an hour by one of the ergonomists for about an hour while he explained why the grey colour was important and why the screen bezel had various shades of grey in it. An experience I've not forgotten - you might say that I still carry the emotional scars!
I remember tan / cream color and white. Plus we had some other colors the farther back you get. Mostly Gray as with the trs-80. My impression was it was all based on the IBM. White with color blue. As someone else said in the comments. Big Blue IBM.
Very interesting vid indeed, so we can know that the true color standard for business pcs purposes was that white-beige theme, but if we look to other computers around the world like in UK and Japan, they didn't apply that standard in quite some of their products, but mostly those pcs were made for home, so they don't have to blend with the "office theme environment", some of this pc were the Sinclair spectrum, armstrad cpc, both from UK, and of course the tandy trs from USA, as many people know. In japan is very interesting that the pc market was stronger towards home pcs and they had a lot of varies colored cases for pcs, most were gray, black even blue and red, as some NEC, Sharp, MSX machines and Fujitsu pcs. But in 1987 was launched (in Japan) the NEC PC98LT, which was a lcd monochrome laptop with a dark-black clamshell case, as shown here www.eonet.ne.jp/~building-pc/pc/pc1987.htm ahead of Apple and IBM in that regard.
My first PC in 1995 was beige, and so was the second. I think it was around 2002 that I got my first black PC, and it's been that way ever since, and I love it.
Pretty sure that ad was sourced from somewhere else on CZcams, and the original uploader recorded it from a VHS tape, and didn't properly trim the video. Happens often with these old adverts that have been uploaded here.
That’s a Motorola ‘flip phone’ from the mid 1990s. I remember when they first came out (they cost $1000, no joke; there was a reason they were only used by the wealthy and business executives back then). They were a HUGE leap over the previous ‘brick phones’ and ‘bag phones’ (which were basically car phones with a 12 volt battery pack in a bag you could carry around).
The book also talks about how IBM wanted the ThinkPad's TrackPoint eraser-head mouse to be blue, because that was IBM's signature color ("Big Blue") and because as I mentioned in the video, red was only supposed to be used for emergency stop buttons. The ThinkPad design team got around this by insisting that the TrackPoint was actually "magenta", not red, and they held their ground through arguments about the definition of magenta, so ultimately it was approved.
Interesting... I know that IBM also made a desktop keyboard with that TrackPoint later on in their Model M line, if I'm not mistaken, I remember LGR doing a review video on that.
When it was originally designed in the late 1980s, the TrackPoint was originally intended for desktop keyboards, as a competitor to the mouse. But the mouse was already so popular by the time that IBM abandoned the idea, until it was revived for use in the ThinkPad (and ultimately later in desktop keyboards, as well).
Good to know. Also, I was reminded that it was the M13 Keyboard that had this, I knew it was something in the M line, but...yeah. Couldn't even find ONE of those on eBay, unfortunately.
VWestlife no, the idea was just for the space saver model m so save even more space. Even though later they did make a full board version.
VWestlife Here’s my funny story about the Trackpoint button. My then 3 yr. old nephew pulled that thing off the Thinkpad and it was missing for maybe a week or two. When the kid started crying and complaining about some pain. His mother took him to the doctor. The pediatrician at first sight knew exactly what’s wrong and it also comes a distinct smell that something was stuck up his nostrils. It was the missing Trackpoint button. It was funny when they asked him how did it up inside his nose? He said “I don’t know. I didn’t put it there”
youtube content 2017 = watching a man read a book
Cyranek Interestingly enough though, this video still beats 80% of the other content on CZcams (increase that to 99.9% for channels with more than 500k subscribers).
Jesus christ I see you everywhere I go, are you me?
You have yourself to blame for watching it and then commenting, lol j/k. You never quite know what the hell will be interesting until you try it, it would appear...
Or people playing video games and telling us exactly what they're doing."I'm going out" "I'll run to that place" etc., also reading the texts from the game. CZcams is for functionally illiterates.
At least this guy cites his sources.
Now I'll have something to talk to the girl at parties about. When I get invited to one.
Did you get invited to one?
@@themadman6310 I’ll bet it was one hell of a party. He never looked back.
He's like the Bob Ross of computers. I could just listen to him talk all day. Makes me feel like I don't have a care in the world.
This color was most often referred to as "putty". In that era, I did alot of bulk purchasing of cubicle parts, shelving, desks and accessories, and that was the predominant color!
Ah, so it IS true! I had heard somewhere that some kind of unspecified DIN standard caused everything to turn beige, but I never knew whether that was true or not. Nice video!
Chyrosran22
Siemens and Brawn did some great office designs, Apple is selling you that design now, a blue print copy of the user interface of any Brawn product. In the 80th, computer systems were still massive ugly junk. All the safety regulation are from a later area.
What if parties as Google start hiring designers, or do something good? now is the Free crap online area, not the best of times for high tech!
lucas rem 'Braun'! ;-). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braun_(company)
Yeah! I remember having some OLD computer equipment that was originally white, and coming back to it years later and noticing it had yellowed.
Apparently this is due to a flame retardant embedded in the plastic that made it turn yellow when it decayed.
50 shades of beige
Kinky
Sounds like that would only be a constant 2nd base. Sad!
Ha ha! I'm a house painter and I've seen that!
😄
Makes me think of that music video by Benny Benassi czcams.com/video/b8qBUza1pO0/video.html
The funny thing is: The complete opposite was the case for cameras, audio equipment and home electronics. In the 70s they were still grey or beige, by the mid-80s they switched to black (because it was considered “the color of professionals”) and by the mid-90s they started to produce grey/silver cases again (VCRs, TVs, etc.).
And here I am, with my orange digicam.
Nobody in the techtuber world would have thought to do a video on this topic. And yet it works.
In 1995 I had an all black PC...i don't remember who made it now. Maybe Micron? And I specifically wanted that color and tracked it down.
I remember the IBM ThinkPad. My brother used to have it since I was still in my late teens when we have internet connection like a modem, but I still remember Windows 98 which was much of the same as the Windows 95, but it had features than the Windows 95 did at the time. We had AOL, but not anymore. I remember the voice of AOL where he says "You got mail!" Those were great times when we had AOL. I also remember the Apple IIgs when I was in school back in the early 1990's when schools had the Apple IIe computers for fun and learning games. I used to played "Oregon Trail", "Pick-A-Dilly Pair", "Wheel Of Fortune" and others. I missed those days when we had computers.
That's why this is one of my favorite youtube channels. That was some awesome story, I mean, history. Thanks.
Reminds me of a scene in Americal Psycho, where couple of managers were competing over who has the coolest off-white tone of his business card - the egg shell white vs bone white... Having something like a black business card would be considered heresy in these circles.
"Purdy good book" lol
came to the comment section to specifically look for a comment referring that. lol
I just stumbled upon this video and decided to watch. Thank you! I just love odd little bits of arcane info, and this totally fits the bill. Good stuff!
I find it kind of funny that the picture you use for the thumbnail is the IBM PS/2 Lineup, which generally werent beige, but more of an eggshell white. They (for the majority spare a few varieties) didnt yellow over time because they were painted and didnt use the same fireproof plastics that react with UV light.
I have always wanted to know about this, thanks.
I'm 20 years old and tbh, I always just assumed computer monitors, keyboards and the like were just dirty and stained, and were originally white 😂.
you're not wrong. plastic yellows with time. new computers were more of a gray than the ugly beige they end up being.
our old pc ended up like that
They aren't 'old' computers; they are 'classic' computers ;)
Great Video.
I worked for IBM New Zealand in the 90s. I remember we had a booth at a large computer show and had managed to get some standard PS/2 screens in black to attach to the Thinkpads on display. The crowd went wild!! Every second person visiting the IBM booth wanted to buy a black screen. Pity we only had three.
There was one renegade company in the UK, who preferred black - Sinclair, apart from the ZX80, the rest of the line, ZX81, Spectrum (Timex brand) including their PC Clone (After Amstrad bought their company), was black.
I thought they were ahead of their time in design, the Spectrum, with its black case and rainbow decal was sublime...
There was another earlier one
Tandy TRS80 was originally silver and black.
But for later models the beige replaced the silver
In an aircraft cockpit all the emergency switches are red, normal ones have different colors, so making those buttons red makes some sense.
The control panel on a server in a datacenter can be just as important as any switch or button on your aircraft.
statinskill Relatively, yes
Raven R Death is not nearly as bad as being poor in this world.
Today 's computers with ATX power supplies don't really have an off switch. Most power supplies do have an AC power button, but normally most people won't use them. On ATX you have an ordinary low voltage pulse button that sends a signal to you're motherboard. For most people this turn their computer on or off, but you can also set it up so it hibernates you're computer..
However in the AT power supplies days (back when we had ISA expansion slots) you actually used an AC switch to turn the computer on or off. Windows 95 even had a message saying that it was safe to turn off the computer (without the risk of loosing unsaved data to disk).
So even on the old computers the red button was for safety. Remember the PC was than something you had on the side. Watering plants or having drinks on top of you're monitor or desktop case made it easy to spill. Liquids and electronics don't mix..
The book is right about the German/European workplace standards but misses the original reason for the standards. It was an ergonomics issue, specifically eye strain and fatigue.
Quick History:
Large corporations started to buy mainframe computers in the 70's to do all their calculations and predictions. But there was one big problem! All their data was on paper in filing cabinets. So through the 70's and early 80's they hired thousands of file clerks to input paper data into mainframe computers using connected terminals. Each terminal would have a copy holder mounted beside the monitor that held letter/legal size paper. So you had someone sitting in front of a terminal reading black text on a bright white paper all day, every day - across the majority of developed nations - millions of workers.
Germany had very strong labor unions and were concerned about worker safety. They regulated many things around workplace ergonomics. In this case, they were concerned about constant refocusing between black text on white and white text on black, since the majority of early keypads were almost all black with white text. So they implemented standards that dictated an acceptable contrast ratio between text and background - that would be a better match for black text on white paper.
As desktop computers started to take over from connected terminals the strict contrast ratio was still applied. The result was that in order to sell in Germany (and as a consequence - Europe), computer manufacturers had to follow the standards. At the time, white plastics were too hard to maintain so computer companies used shades of beige with dark text on the keyboards. This is why all computers in the early 80s were beige without exception.
By the mid 80's everyone was starting input data directly into their own desktop computers so there was no longer any need to have hundreds of file clerks transcribing large amounts of paper documents. Which meant the core issue went away but the standards hung on - so most computers remained beige through the 1980’s.
Of course there were two flaws with the original logic - good typists don't look at the keyboard and all display monitors until the mid 80's were black with green text. But this did not stop Germany/Europe from implementing the standards. Eye fatigue was a big concern at the time and a number of companies were working to improve screen colors to reduce eye fatigue. By the mid eighties screens were all moving to black text on white (Starting with Xerox and Apple).
How do I know this? I worked as an industrial designer in the early 1980’s for NCR corporation and we had a design for a new terminal that had a dark facia and keyboard and light body color. We were forced to change to beige to meet the standards and we weren't happy about it. So I was very familiar with this issue.
Hope you find this interesting.
Graham
Interesting info! Thanks!
Is there any way to get this book online (buy or download) ? There is no way to get a paper copy for anyone outside the US..
There are multiple copies available on eBay from sellers who do ship internationally.
Huh, interesting. Always wondered why they were all that dull cream / grey colour.
It was a conspiracy to sell retrobrite!!
Nope, it was a conspiracy to make the !990's PowerMac's seem like "awesome" technology designs...
don't like retrobrite... all that beautyfull, painstakingly accumulated tan to be removed... makes me sad trying to enjoying sights of old computers when suddenly they start to look new again.
LOL, no, because Retr0brite is a free-license procedure!
Great informational vid! Thank you!
I am really thinking about buying that book. I am a true Thinkpad lover.
The law about beige office equipment really seems to be still in use here in Germany, as most desks in schools, especially in the computer cabinets, are beige, (apart from many wood/woodgrain desks). Most office monitors we use do have that ugly color as well. That really was a stupid law in my oppinion
The office I worked at has blue, gray and black equipment and chairs and stuff. They do have wood IKEA shelves though.
sir, i'd never heard of your channel before, but i got 22 seconds in and i subbed simply because this seems like the kind of channel i will binge watch and learn a lot from :) :) :) :)
Regarding the depiction of the PC in offices on TV during this time, I suspect the fact that they were not turned on has less to do with representing their place in the work environment, and more to do with avoiding distracting screen flicker.
Plenty of TV shows were able to have CRTs on camera without any visible flicker -- all they needed to do was to set the camera's shutter speed to match the monitor's refresh rate.
True, but that is not so simple an adjustment as it sounds. In addition to taking time, which is always at a premium on a TV shoot, it cascades into lighting adjustments. Directors would typically only have reason to bother with this if the CRT was a practical prop. Otherwise, they are spending their time and effort on set dressing rather than whatever is the focus of the scene. The simplest solution would be to just not turn them on.
How did they do it in Jurassic Park?
this video was nice. the guy took the time to elaborately show us the source of his proposition. so much info vids just tell you 'facts' without stating any sources.
In the beginning of the 1990ies germany's retail brand "Escom" wanted to market desktop and tower pcs in solid black color. Perhaps it was even as early as 1989, i do not recall the exact date.
And they got beaten by this notorious regulation as well. they had to market their machines as "not for office use" too.
but they stood by that, since it was their corporate design from day one as they started "for the home musician/gamer corner". (and later they were the unlucky guys to bought the remains of commodore amiga, folding up their complete business.)
Escom pcs had such a great design
Escom died because of bad economic decisions. They underestimated the speed of development and had way to much old stuff on stock. Their factory outlet was.. big.. very big.. I remember thousands of old graphic cards sold for literally nothing.
Thanks for this share! Awesome!
TBH the only thing where I'm really picky about the color is my keyboard - something light with durable, high-contrast lettering all the way (a bicolor scheme is nice, too, structures things a bit better). Black makes it hard to make out the spaces between keys under nonideal lighting, resulting in Dancing Letters Syndrome if your eyesight is less than steady and you're not a genuine touch typist, both of which happen to apply. Beige, while of limited optical appeal, is practical in the sense that it won't make a bit of yellowing too obvious.
It's scary to think that my keyboard is now over 20 years old (and has been with me for half that) and my (once-white) mouse is pushing on 15.
My Timex/Sinclair 1000 from 1981 is black. One of my buddies at school had a Texas Instruments TI-99 computer that had a brushed aluminum look to it IIRC. And the Atari 800XL was black, too.
I owned two Atari 800 XL systems.
I wouldn't call them black by any means.
They're mostly beige in fact. I mean, technically the keyboard is black, and the surface, but the bulk of the body of the system is beige.
All the accessories are mostly beige (plotter, tape drive, etc.)
It's a beige system with black and chrome accents.
I lusted after an Atari 800 back in the day. Mainly for the games, but also because I wanted to program a machine that could do sound and color. Now I am nostalgic for Atari and geek out over seeing the logo in Blade Runner 2049. But my Sinclair still works and I learned how to program with it, and it's black all over, so I gotta love it.
Not all TI-99's were silver. Beige was the norm for the 99/4A.
Mister Hat Ours was black with a semi-shiny metal cover. The optional expansion stuff was also metal, but none of it was shiny chrome.
Mister Hat, It wasn't the norm until TI started taking on Commodore 64 and the IBM Peanut in the great computer wars of the early 80's. By the height of it, you could buy one TI, get 9 free. ;-) They had to cut costs of the polished metal by switching to the beige plastic. The TI-99/4A I own and still in the original box, now put away in a closet, has the shiney metal case.
Great video, thanks for the upload! :)
I had wondered this myself, but hadn't looked into it. Our 1991 Gateway 2000 PC had an XT style case, and a big read power switch on the side.
I had remembered that commercial as one for a PowerBook! The "tall" screen laptop seemed to be a poke at the L40.
One mistake that David Hill would remember (Together with Gavin O'Hara) is the 2013 "Thinkpad" (Is basically the Edge series) chicklet keyboard scandal that replaced the normal Thinkpad keyboard to a chicklet one and they did a merge of the Trackpoint's buttons into the clickpad just to be closer to an Apple kind of design, thus infuriating any Thinkpad user in that moment that they were buying it from many years
Here is the source if you guys wanna read: blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/why-you-should-give-in-to-the-new-thinkpad-keyboard
Then he regretted this and the Thinkpad's of these days do have a keyboard that is a normal one instead of a chicklet one iirc
They still use chiclets, but they are by far the best chiclet keyboards available. If only they realized that the perfect laptop keyboard is their chiclet ThinkPad design with the classic T420 layout...
Yes, same I say about the one on my E440 but still I miss the older Thinkpad keyboards, had a 600E and the keyboard was a nice one BTW :3
Maybe its just me, but i dont understand how people think the older and newer style keyboards are any different. Neither are mechanically "chicklet", and both are scissor-type. The only difference are the key-face shapes. The travel and feel are the same. iirc if you take the key's out of both new and old style, they are exactly the same underneath.
The bigger issue i think is the move from 7 to 6-row. I do agree about the single-clickpad thing, those were disgusting to use.
The fabled beige era
Super interesting video, thanks for creating it.
The reference the Jay Bell's books surprised me! Glad to find a fellow fan!
I always liked the beige color. It just feels more natural to work with in a office setting
great info, great video. 10/10
I had a Commodore CDTV (basically an Amiga 500 with 1MB of RAM and a CD-ROM drive). That was a black computer released in 1991, but it was intended to be placed alongside hifi equipment (i.e. consumer electronics rather than office electronics) hence it was designed not to visually clash with the other kit.
Commodore actually insisted that the CDTV be sold in the audio/video equipment section and not in the computer section of retailers, and that salesmen should make no mention of its Amiga compatibility. Just some of the reasons why it was a total flop...
What's the music in the background?
Wonderfully done! Thanks!
Now to find a copy of that book. It’s hard to buy them online because so often they get real musty.
How did you get the thinkpads to freeze on the Boot-up screen?
Hit the Pause key.
I like how even back then, they knew that chiclet keyboards were absolute garbage. AND THEN THEY HAD TO SCREW IT ALL UP.
AROAH Entertainment Blame Lenovo for that.
I bought 2 ThinkPads from a friend for $20 (together). I think one has a Pentium-M and the other is newer, but I don't remember the models. But both are solid, great working systems regardless of their age. I need to see if they use the SATA interface so I can slap an SSD in each.
Actually interesting, thank you.
people who work with precise colors tend to make more errors when using screens with black frames around it thats why many monitors used for color correction have light colored frames around the screens.
The beige answer is = Originally thought that a white plastic would help with increased definition for both the keyboard but more importantly the monitor - particularly as the monitor bezels were quite heavy. BUT the white soon discoloured and so they toned the colour to a non noticeable tone of beige...
Very interesting. I actually like beige/white/pearl colours for computers. I think it looks very neat and easy on the eye for some type of electronics.
I just came here from Technology Connections who was asking why office equipment was always beige. An interesting video about something I never realised. The funny thing is that back in the 80s a friend had this most amazing Psychedelic pattern office chair. He said that back in the early 70s it was standard issue for Britain's Government owned Post Office Telephones, who obviously wanted to appear to not be stuck in the 1950s.
p.s back in the Noughties I had a really nice, matt black IBM monitor.
A very nice and pleasant video thanks for posting it
my first laptop was a thinkpad. still have it and still use it sometimes.
Is that the guy from "Mad About You" at the end of video?
Where I can get old towers ATX format? They were better than what we have now
I totally want to buy a ThinkPad now.
Do it - there's a reason why they are so popular, and it's not only for the way they look.
Perfect timing, for a limited time you can get a 2017 model thinkpad.
Doesn't every year have a Thinkpad? Or are you referring to the 25th anniversary Thinkpad?
I'm referring to the 25th anniversary thinkpad, sorry
I've owned many brands of laptop and since I bought a Thinkpad, it's all I buy now. You should check out Louis Rossman's take on the 25th anniversary thinkpad before buying that though.
Paul Reiser was the celebrity chosen to be the pitchman in the marketing material for a top end company, looking to go in a bold new direction, to have their laptop brand stand out from the competition? Offering the ThinkPad in black with the red TrackPoint center button instead of a touch pad wasn't the boldest decision made by I.B.M., regarding the ThinkPad. He actually did a number of spots for them and other products later on, after the ThinkPad campaign success, and got himself a lot of exposure that boosted his T.V./movie career because of it.
the first non beige computer i ever saw was the sanyo mbc550 it was amazing it was like a stereo
My friend at school uses that same Think Pad laptop in 2017
As I write this, there are already 147 comments posted, and I haven't read them all, so my comment may be repetitive. I also have not read the book, so it's possible that it is mentioned there that the real reason for "beige" computers is that personal computers were introduced at the height of the popularity of "almond" desktop telephones, and desktop computers were supposed to match that color. IBM was considered the best brand of desktop computer for business, and all other brands were trying to capture some of IBM's market share. Thus came the proliferation of various shades of beige. In fact, black telephones were considered "old school," and no computer manufacturer wanted to share in that characterization. As desktop telephones moved away from almond (or vanished altogether,) the need for beige computers was eliminated.
I'm not Chuck. - All that typing and still wrong, hilarious.
The heck with the comments, man. Did you even watch the video?
In the 80's I am thinking the GRID laptops were black or a dark gray. Is my recollection correct?
I had a SWTPC 6800, Commodore PET and a IBM Series ONE at one time.
sure wish I still had them
Huh! How about that. Well, TIL. Thanks Mr. Westlife! :-)
I googled around a little, and I found a PDF of the book somewhere shady
you learn something new everyday
I saved up 20$ and told my mom to use the next two weeks allowance and I bought a Tandy 1000 RL for 50$ any tips to help me with service or any other help?
I have an entire video about the 1000RL.
when every I think about the old white/beige computers. I think about how people who would smoke near them and that would turn them piss yellow or brown from the nicotine.
ModPallet some yellowed without anyone smoking near them, ironicly, because they had an additive in the plastic to make them fire retardant. Same goes for those other yellowing beige boxes from the 90s, the SNES.
i think it's sun damage
My Tandy 1000 is out in the garage collecting dust. Pulled it out of the dumpster. It works but what a pain to use.
i like the advert at the end :)
Olivetti PCs from this period were grey. On one occasion I was backed into a corner for an hour by one of the ergonomists for about an hour while he explained why the grey colour was important and why the screen bezel had various shades of grey in it. An experience I've not forgotten - you might say that I still carry the emotional scars!
I just ordered the book, love my ThinkPads......
Amazingly, I'm old enough to remember that commercial at the end.
Oh hey, I was looking at that thinkpad 720 a few days ago
I remember tan / cream color and white. Plus we had some other colors the farther back you get. Mostly Gray as with the trs-80. My impression was it was all based on the IBM. White with color blue. As someone else said in the comments. Big Blue IBM.
Good video! I actually had a Tandy 1000 RL. Never got the HD or memory upgrade though :(
What was the research about anyway?
I want a smartphone case in this classic beige. It actually invokes a feeling of warmth and innocence when I look at it.
Very interesting vid indeed, so we can know that the true color standard for business pcs purposes was that white-beige theme, but if we look to other computers around the world like in UK and Japan, they didn't apply that standard in quite some of their products, but mostly those pcs were made for home, so they don't have to blend with the "office theme environment", some of this pc were the Sinclair spectrum, armstrad cpc, both from UK, and of course the tandy trs from USA, as many people know. In japan is very interesting that the pc market was stronger towards home pcs and they had a lot of varies colored cases for pcs, most were gray, black even blue and red, as some NEC, Sharp, MSX machines and Fujitsu pcs. But in 1987 was launched (in Japan) the NEC PC98LT, which was a lcd monochrome laptop with a dark-black clamshell case, as shown here www.eonet.ne.jp/~building-pc/pc/pc1987.htm ahead of Apple and IBM in that regard.
What exactly do you do with old computers? I collect old clocks and I have them running. What do you do with a computer like that?
I'm still IBM Thinkpad fan since 1998.
I'm watching this on one of my ThinkPads. :)
What would the book "Shades of beige" be about?
I'd want that book on a PDF...
So I can read it on my thinkpad.
My first PC in 1995 was beige, and so was the second. I think it was around 2002 that I got my first black PC, and it's been that way ever since, and I love it.
The phone that was at the end of the video looks like a interesting product to show off.
Pretty sure that ad was sourced from somewhere else on CZcams, and the original uploader recorded it from a VHS tape, and didn't properly trim the video. Happens often with these old adverts that have been uploaded here.
That’s a Motorola ‘flip phone’ from the mid 1990s. I remember when they first came out (they cost $1000, no joke; there was a reason they were only used by the wealthy and business executives back then). They were a HUGE leap over the previous ‘brick phones’ and ‘bag phones’ (which were basically car phones with a 12 volt battery pack in a bag you could carry around).
what about the iMac G3? it came out in the 90's and was not beige either.
Thinking the same thing.
08:40 is that Paul Reiser (Burke) from the Aliens movie? :D
Cool stuff :)
The more you know, thanks for the information. :)
My oldest computer case, an AOpen "QF50C" that I got beginning of 2004, is beige :)
Wasnt this becuause of uv light?
I had a commodore 64 it was great I wish I never sold it for $10 20 years ago.
6:47 I think a black PC would blend in better with the Hi-Fi stuff in the background...
Was the Radio Shack TRS-80 of 1977 black or beige?
Assuming you mean the TRS-80, it was silver.
VWestlife Black with silver accents, to be precise.
Very interesting video.
I never heard of the Tandy 1000 SL/E. I had an SL/2 and worked for RS for 10 years, but never heard of the E model.
I did a video about it. I believe the 1000SL/E was sold exclusively to the educational market, just like Apple's eMac was originally.
Maybe a typo on page 175, "Yamazaki" would be the correct signature.