Here's a blast from the past, courtesy of USAF electronics school, Keeler AFB, 1975...
color bands 1 thru 3:
Bad (black) - 0.
Boys (brown) - 1
Rape (red) - 2
Our (orange) - 3
Young (yellow) - 4
Girls (green) - 5
But (blue) - 6
Violet (aka purple) - 7
Gives (gray) - 8
Willingly (white) - 9
4th band silver- 10 percent tolerance
" " gold- 5 percent tolerance
No 4th band -20 percent tolerance
We picked up on that color code pretty quick.
Hope these pics are legible.
Cat; I learned that from my Dad when I was 7 or 8 back in '63. I think every military member who was involved in electronics learned that one. Teach it now and incur the wrath of the PC NAZI's.
I say,"urinate upon'em"! Come to think of it, (brain gettin'old) I think I may have first heard that in high school electronics class, maybe a slightly different version. Funny how much we forget as we pile on the years, even more so the things we retain.
I've looked at these thing for so long that I can just pick out the value without any calculation. Sort of like picking out entire words rather than individual letters in Morse code. The 1% E96 values are more difficult and the body color is such that I can't tell what the colors are until after measuring. Brown, red, orange all look similar as do blue, green, and violet. Sometimes black and brown are indistinguishable.