Why Our Tennis Balls Are Yellow

Between 1950 and 1965, having a television became normal in the U.S. Growing from 9% in the early 1950s, by 1965, televisions were in 93% of all American homes.

This takes us to tennis balls.

Yellow Tennis Balls

In 1972, when documentary maker David Attenborough (Planet Earth series) was a BBC executive, he realized white tennis balls were a problem. Almost invisible on color TV, they needed a remake. At the same time, the International Tennis Federation was contemplating a switch from white to yellow tennis balls. With the BBC supporting their revolutionary suggestion, they had the legitimacy to proceed. As a result, tennis could become a TV sport. But still Wimbledon waited until 1986 to mandate yellow balls.

Our Bottom Line: Color Perception

Although we’ve said tennis balls are yellow, some people think they are green.

During 2018, a reporter spotted a Twitter poll asking if tennis balls were yellow, green, or some other color. But then, seeing the results, “her jaw dropped.” Among the 30,000 responses, 52% said green, 42% yellow, and 6% other. Meanwhile, at The Atlantic, she found that many of her colleagues used “green” tennis balls but manufacturers said their tennis balls were optic yellow.

Asked about tennis ball color, one expert said, “In other words, like the color of a lot of objects, how we label [a tennis ball] is determined both by perceptual and cognitive factors: the actual physical light entering your eye and … knowledge about what people have typically labeled the objects.” Continuing he said, we know when something is yellow but we have difficulty describing it.

So, as economists, where are we? Whether observing the impact of an innovation like television or a survey, we will always have unintended consequences.

My sources and more: Thanks to Moss and Fog for inspiring today’s post and CNN, for more detail. From there, my next stop was a history of television from the US Census. Then, following the tennis ball, I next wound up with an Atlantic article on its color. And finally, for more on our color vision, “the dress” created a massive mystery.