Plasma TV History
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As mentioned in the previous article, plasma TVs (also called "plasma display panels") have been around for more than 40 years. This might surprise a lot of people who view plasma TVs as high-tech, state-of-the-art units.
The plasma TV was invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and their first graduate student, Robert Willson. The plasma display was built for the automated teaching system PLATO, as the cathode ray tubes of ordinary TV sets had limitations.
According to Wikipedia, plasma display panels in their early years experienced a crest and trough in popularity:
"The original monochrome (usually orange or green) panels enjoyed a surge of popularity in the early 1970s because the displays were rugged and needed neither memory nor circuitry to refresh the images. There followed a long period of sales decline in the late 1970s as semiconductor memory made CRT displays relatively cheaper than plasma displays. Nonetheless, plasma's relatively large screen size and thin profile made the displays attractive for high-profile placement such as lobbies and stock exchanges."
One group of people particularly interested in plasma TVs early on were the Japanese, according to the University of Illinois plasma history:
"[The Japanese] saw plasma as an answer to the problem of displaying their Kanji script, something the Western alphanumeric computer displays of the early 1960s could not do. Soplasma panels became widely used in Japan for cash registers, meters, and public signs."
The first plasma TV was sold to the public by Pioneer in 1997. Nearly a decade later, the largest plasma display panel in the world was shown in Las Vegas. In a remarkable event, the television industry recognized the outstanding efforts of plasma TV inventors Bitzer, Slottow, and Willson by presenting them a 2002 Emmy award for technological achievement; sharing the award with the trio was Fujitsu, the world’s leading manufacturer of plasma display panels.
Currently, the biggest obstacle to the widespread use of plasma televisions is cost. However, plasma TV prices have been dropping in the recent years, making these units more commercially viable.
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