In the early days of personal computing, we did not enjoy the luxuries of color displays. While we are currently spoiled with graphics cards and monitors that support millions of colors, the early 1980’s provided us with considerably fewer options. Everything was monochrome, and the most popular supplier of that graphical output was the Hercules Graphics Card. Of course, we did have some choice in color schemes. Depending on the monitor, we could choose between green and black, orange and black, or white and black. Not exactly suited for today’s Photoshop tasks…
I recently bought a very capable graphics card for my current desktop PC for around four hundred dollars. I’m talking 256 MB of video RAM, supporting millions of colors, while effortlessly rendering high definition 3D graphics. Back in the days of monochrome computing, the Hercules Graphics Card sold for five hundred dollars! Even more surprising, that price was considered very competitive. The affordability led to this product being considered the display standard, and was found in the majority of IBM compatible personal computers at that time.
The resolution possible with the Hercules Graphics Card was 720×350. The models that followed this card included the Hercules Graphics Card Plus (which allowed user-defined fonts) and the Hercules InColor Card (offering a sixteen color output).