The etymological root of monochrome is found in the Greek word monóchrōmos . Monochrome is an adjective that is used to describe something that has a single color .
When something has a single hue, it is therefore referred to as monochrome or as monochromatic . Take the case of a green t-shirt : its entire surface is of that tone, without any details or drawings . Due to this characteristic, it can be said that it is a monochrome t-shirt.
Sometimes the term is used to refer to an element with a widely predominant color , although it may have different areas. It can be said that a red car is monochrome because of the paint on its body, even though the tires, bumpers and door handles are black.
The idea of monochrome can also appear when there are two tones . It is often said that a black and white image is monochrome. A monochrome monitor , in this framework, is a device that combines black and green on its screen. Until the mid-1980s, computers often used these monitors.
During the early days of computing, monochrome monitors were very common and in fact have remained engraved in the memories of those who were children or adolescents at that time, to the point of being the first image that comes to mind when they think about the computer. “monitor” concept. We are talking about a period that lasted from the 60s to the 80s, when color monitors began to appear.
It is important to mention that the monochrome monitor was not immediately replaced by the color one in the market, but it took a few years for the general public to make the necessary economic investment to adopt this new technology which, in any case, grew exponentially until the decade of the 90s, offering more resolution and number of colors every year.
For certain tasks in which it was not necessary to use images but prioritize text, the monochrome monitor was more than enough. In fact, even today its use is common in contexts such as supermarkets, for cash register machines . It should be noted that the definition of the monochromes was higher than that of the first color ones.
Unlike color monitor technology, which allows the reproduction of highly colored text and graphics through the use of different intensity levels of phosphors in the three primary colors of light (red, green and blue), which They use monochromes, they only have one phosphor color. In its time it was common for people to refer to this product as a phosphor screen .
It is possible to get three versions of monochrome monitors, each with a different color: green, amber or white, depending on whether the P1, P3 or P4 phosphor is used, respectively. The latter, the P4 phosphor, is the same one used by older televisions. Although there are those who claim that the amber monitor is the least harmful to eyesight, since it reduces eye strain, this is not a claim that has been scientifically proven.
As can be seen, beyond the precise definition of monochrome, the concept can be used with reference to objects of more than one color. Therefore the notion must be understood in its context.
Monochromatic light , on the other hand, is made up of components of a single hue. That is why it also has a unique wavelength that corresponds to said tone. White light, on the other hand, is developed with multiple components.