[mikethedruid]

Some very early "dog bone" resistors had proprietary color schemes, but the standard soon became the B-E-D system, which stands for Body-End-Dot. The first digit is the body color, 2nd digit is the end color, and the number of zeros is the dot. If the other end is colored and is silver it is a 10% tolerance resistor, if it is gold it is 5%, if not colored then 20%.

Later resistors use the band color system where the first band is the first digit, the second band is the 2nd digit, the 3rd band is the number of zeros, and the 4th band is the tolerance.

There is a horse for remembering the color code which they taught us many years ago in electronics school in the Navy, and it goes like this... "Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly, Get Some Now."

Write the initial letters vertically in order, Black=0 Brown=1 Red=2 Orange=3 Yellow=4 Green=5 Blue=6 Violet=7 Grey=8 White=9 Gold=5% Silver=10% None=20%

I hope this little lesson makes working with resistors easier.