> I can’t remember why the lightning bolt was yellow. With hindsight that seems the strangest thing about it; cyan would have been a more obvious choice for electricity. Possibly it was just to contrast more with the blue screens of the computers.
I had to stop and consider this, because it seemed to me that yellow was "obviously" the correct color. And indeed a few image searches confirmed this: a yellow lightning bolt is by far the most universal symbol for electricity, along with the standard black-on-yellow danger icon. I'm not sure how far back in history that representation goes, or what its origins are, but I think it's been used ubiquitously in comics and cartoons for a long time.
I had to stop and consider this, because it seemed to me that yellow was "obviously" the correct color. And indeed a few image searches confirmed this: a yellow lightning bolt is by far the most universal symbol for electricity, along with the standard black-on-yellow danger icon. I'm not sure how far back in history that representation goes, or what its origins are, but I think it's been used ubiquitously in comics and cartoons for a long time.