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I think that Jamie Zawinski cut his teeth on the Apple II series. Those had green-on-black monitors.

I agree, though. The contrast is a strain on the eyes.

The Apple II connected to a color TV set via an RF interface. When you were programming it it was usually fuzzy white-with-colored-fringes on black. Sharp green-on-black is from older terminals. The green phosphors were slower to decay, so the refresh rate could be lower. Same reason older oscilloscopes used green phosphors--so that you could see the trace.

I'm pretty sure the Apple II series all emitted NTSC analog video out, and the two common monitors pre- //c (Monitor // and Monitor ///) were green only.

As a child I remember piping the video out through our vcr to the tv and being quite disappointed by the fringe-tastic picture quality. Ahh, the bad old days. :)

Green screen monitors were very common with Apple II machines. My programming classes in high school were taught on Apple II and IIe machines hooked up to green screen Apple Monitor II monitors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Monitor_II).

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