He was just mentioned on today's Lateral podcast with Tom Scott.
Apparently, he's the reason tennis balls are yellow.
I guess they were traditionally white but when they started broadcasting matches on TV it was too hard to see the ball.
David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead so they would come through on camera. Ever since then tennis balls have been yellow.
> David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead
Apparently he didn’t explicitly say they should be yellow, he just said the white didn’t work, the ITF chose yellow after research and studies.
Ironically, Wimbledon was the last venue to switch to the colour, despite David influencing the decision to change it.
> In 1972 the ITF introduced yellow tennis balls into the rules of tennis, as research had shown these balls to be more visible to television viewers. Meanwhile Wimbledon continued to use the traditional white ball, but eventually adopted yellow balls in 1986.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_ball#
https://pressurebox.com/blogs/news/why-are-tennis-balls-yell...
Amazing. It’s relatively easy to find color photos of this, for example one of the very last pics here, from 1970: https://www.esquire.com/sports/g36954688/wimbledon-1970s-pho...
But what is the oldest color photo of white ball tennis?
Also, do we have a good source for this story, because it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia: ”In 1972, the International Tennis Federation introduced yellow balls, as these were easier to see on television. Wimbledon continued using white balls until 1986.”
The only color photo of a ball in that link that I saw was #32 which is from 1978, which would support the idea that Wimbledon did not switch in 1972.
Oh yeah, you’re right, I just gave it a quick scan for balls and thought they were all from 1970.
What do you mean tennis balls are yellow? I always thought they were green? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_ball#/media/File:Closeu...
They're officially yellow. Many people (~50% in my experience) perceive this colour as green though.
> Tennis balls are fluorescent yellow in professional competitions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_ball
Yellow and green are shown in the linked image.
Mind blown. Thanks for sharing!