Over the years, a variety of display devices and technologies have been used in order to display electronic data in a way that's legible to humans.
One of the earliest electronic displays is the cathode ray tube (CRT), which was made commercial in 1922. The CRT consists of an electron gun that forms images by firing electrons onto a phosphor-coated screen. The earliest CRTs were monochrome and were used primarily in oscilloscopes and black and white televisions. The first commercial colour CRT was produced in 1954.[1] CRTs were the single most popular display technology used in television sets and computer monitors for over half a century; it was not until the 2000s that LCDs began to gradually replace them.
A derivative of CRTs were storage tubes, which had the ability to retain information displayed on them, unlike standard CRTs which need to be refreshed periodically. In 1968, Tektronix introduced the Direct-View Bistable Storage Tube, which went on to be widely used in oscilloscopes and computer terminals.[2]
1922 Monochrome cathode ray tube:
1954 Color cathode ray tube for the display of color television[3]:
1968[4] The Direct-View Bistable Storage Tube CRT retains static information displayed upon it, written using a steerable electron beam that can be turned off. In principle the DVBST is similar to an Etch-a-Sketch, and was used in vector displays of early computers and in oscilloscopes.
1957 Split-flap display:
1961 Flip-disc display:
1964 Monochrome plasma display:
1968 Light-emitting diode:
1968 Eggcrate display
1967 Vacuum fluorescent display as used in consumer electronics.
1972 Twisted nematic field effect LCD[5][6]:
1969 Braille display:[7]
1986 Color Thin film transistor liquid crystal display[8]:
1995 Full-color plasma display[9]:
2003 Organic light-emitting diode display (OLED) [10]
2003 Active-matrix OLED (AMOLED):[11]
2004 Electronic paper[12]:
1974 Electroluminescent display (ELD)[13]: