Blue was by far the easiest on the eye compared to Red, Green, Yellow, Cyan, Purple, on a white background, on old CRT monitors.
The more interesting question is why were backgrounds white rather than black?
The more interesting question is why were backgrounds white rather than black?
My first excursions on the web were on Macs so I thought something pages were doing some Windows-specific trickery when I first saw the same pages on Windows with white instead of grey backgrounds.
Even a lot of books on HTML in the early days had screenshots from Macs and you'd follow an example on Windows and the output would look different because of the different default background color.
I'll still use that as an editing background at times.
so to add to the mix, that with a monochrome display, relatively low rez lighted pixels making letters (on a black background) still has the letters looking pixelated. the same lighted pixels making a white background leaves the black letters looking smoother.
outside of "labs", i remember the VT-100 being the first "white paper" display that was generally in use, but that could have been a regional thing in the shadow of the Maynard mill.