> The question is: would a gamma corrected output be any more correct than
> this linear? If I corrected with gamma 2.2, the first case would give
> RGB=255,255,255 again and the second case would give RGB=136,136,136.
>
> Why would I prefer one over the other?

Because if you give your monitor (or pretty much any monitor) 64,64,64, it's 
not 4x dimmer than 255,255,255.  You need to give it 136,136,136 (or 
whatever) to get that.

The original reason for this is that inside a CRT, the "brightness" you saw 
was not linearly related to the applied voltage, but a gamma curve. 
Everything was designed for CRTs, so LCDs had to follow in order not to look 
stupid.

Also, it's not a bad design anyway, because it gives you more detail in the 
darker colours where your eye is more sensitive (ie instead of having only 
64 discrete brightnesses between 0 and 1/4 brightness, you now have 136).

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