[GreenKeys] tty paint colors

[Jim Haynes]

You can spend a lot of time going through old parts books that have
paint color listings - but no color samples.  My guess is that from
time to time the code may have changed without the color changing,
as they changed the kind of paint formulation.

Textured vinyl is a paint - hmm, the most familiar example I can think
of is the IBM selectric typewriter, and of course IBM computer cabinets.
I'm pretty sure the gray-green wrinkle was replaced by a textured
vinyl the same color for production - maybe you could get the wrinkle
in replacement parts if you really asked nicely.  I remember seeing a
blue Model 28 once, but I don't remember where.  Probably those blue and
red and yellow colors were made to match IBM computers; I know computers
came in all those colors, plus white and maybe others.  The Model 29
IDP ASR sets were for some unaccounted reason "pink", probably rose
beige is the official name of the color.  I remember a color called
"greige" a gray-beige.  There was a beige for Model 28s used with
Burroughs 220 computers, which had a green and beige color scheme.

In general paint formulas come and go, and the color codes changed with
them.  Back in the 1930s a popular paint scheme was metal hand-painted
to look like grained wood.  I heard that finish made a comeback in the
1960s and some old painters who knew how to do it came out of retirement.
(I don't think Teletype made anything with that finish in the 1960s, but
they definitely did in the 1930s.)  The 1938 edition of Principles of
Electricity Applied to Telephone and Telegraph Work shows a Model 19
painted that way.




jhhaynes at earthlink dot net