A History of the Television Screen

Early television sets may have an attractive retro design that appeals to the nostalgia lover in all of us, but once they're switched on they simply can't compare to today's models. Not only that, an old television set would look out of place in the modern entertainment center.

The Beginning
The first TV is a product of Dr. Karl Ferdinand Brown's 1897 invention of the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). The cathode is a heated filament, rather similar to those used in a conventional light bulb. With the use of coils and positively charged rings, the CRT shoots a stream of electrons at the phosphor coated inner surface of the screen, which causes it to emit light.

Electrons have to travel at high speeds to cause the screen to light up, which is the reason for the considerable depth of older televisions and therefore the hefty size of older entertainment centers.

Changing the intensity of this stream results in different shades of black, gray, and white. A typical CRT television uses five hundred and twenty five lines to form a composite image. These refresh thirty times per second. This is faster than the human brain can perceive, so the result is what appears to be a continuously moving picture.

A Splash of Color
Though the technology existed before the 20th Century, commercial television broadcast did not begin until the 1920s. It took another thirty years to develop color television, which uses three types of phosphors to create pixels in three different colors. Colors alternate and mix to create a color image in the same way many printers use three color cartridges to print in color.

The Big Slimdown
Older televisions have rounded corners, which give the screen a rounded, bulbous appearance. Sharpening these edges to create the appearance of watching a square screen proved difficult, because this resulted in distorted images along the edges and in the corners of the screen.

The only way to truly solve this was to actually make the screens flatter, which has only recently become possible with advances in technology.

The Plasma Revolution
The effort to create plasma screen TVs began back in the late 1960s, but the first publicly available plasma screen didn't come along until 1990, and even then it had its share of shortcomings. Colors were washed out, blacks looked gray, and the image appeared blurry.

Over the past decade and a half, however, the bulk of these problems have been solved with better dyes for the pixels and higher intensity light. The ultra thin plasma screen began to see commercial success in the late nineties, and this latest technology is only becoming more popular. With screens just a few inches thick, the plasma TV has changed the shape of the entertainment center as well.

The Next Big Thing
If the history of the television screen tells us anything, it's that there will be advancements beyond the stunningly vivid plasma screen. It's even likely that the technology already exists, but it will probably be a few decades before it's perfected and available. In the meantime, if you haven't already seen one, plasma is looking good enough to keep us watching until the next thing big thing comes along.