Display technology

📺 Full Timeline: History of Display Technology

🧩 1. Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)

Year—>Invention / Milestone—>Inventor / Developer—>Description
1897—>First CRT: “Braun Tube”—>Ferdinand Braun—>The earliest cathode ray tube for oscilloscope-style displays.
1907–1920s—>Cathodoluminescence used—>Various physicists—>Foundation for CRT TVs and monitors.
1922—>First commercial CRTs—>Industry labs—>Used in laboratories and radar.
1954—>First color CRT television—>RCA—>Released to the public; revolutionized home entertainment.

🧩 2. Monochrome CRT Storage Tube

Year—>Milestone—>Developer—>Description
1968—>Direct-view bistable storage tube—>Tektronix—>CRT capable of storing and displaying graphics and text without refresh.

🧩 3. Plasma Display

Year—>Milestone—>Inventor(s)—>Description
1936—>Conceptualized—>Kálmán Tihanyi—>Hungarian physicist proposed a plasma-based display.
1964—>First working plasma panel—>Donald Bitzer, Gene Slottow, Robert Willson—>Developed for the PLATO computer education system at University of Illinois.

🧩 4. Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)

Year—>Milestone—>Inventor / Company—>Description
1964—>First working LCD (DSM)—>George Heilmeier, RCA—>Used dynamic scattering mode.
1968—>TFT-based LCD prototype—>Bernard Lechner, RCA—>First liquid crystal display using a thin-film transistor.
1973—>Active-Matrix TFT LCD
T. Peter Brody, Westinghouse—>First active-matrix LCD developed.
1982—>Portable LCD TV—>Japanese manufacturers—>First consumer-use LCD TVs.
1984—Epson ET-10—>Epson—>2.1” color LCD pocket TV.
1988—>Full-color 14" LCD—>Sharp—>First demo of a full-color active-matrix LCD, rivaling CRTs.

🧩 5. LED Displays

Year—>Milestone—>Developer—>Description
1962—>First visible LED—>Nick Holonyak, General Electric—>Red LED, foundation of LED display tech.
1968—>First intelligent LED display—>Hewlett-Packard (HP 5082-7000)—>7-segment numeric LED display for calculators.
1980s—>Color LEDs—>Multiple labs (AlInGaP LEDs)—>Enabled RGB LED combinations.
1989—>Blue LED breakthrough—>Shuji Nakamura—>Opened the way for full-color LED displays.
1997—>LED video wall—>SACO Technologies + U2 PopMart Tour—>First large-scale LED display for live events.

🧩 6. Flat-Panel Displays (General)

Year—>Milestone—>Developer—>Description
1958—>Predicta (flat CRT-style)—>Philco—>Unique TV with flat-screen illusion.
1960s–70s—>R&D into DLP, LCD, LCoS—>Many labs—>Emergence of flat displays.

🧩 7. OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode)

Year—>Milestone—>Developer—>Description
1987—>First OLED—>Ching Tang & Steven Van Slyke (Kodak)—>Organic compounds that emit light directly when electric current is applied.
2009—>First OLED TV—>Sony XEL-1—>World’s first commercially available OLED television.

🧩 8. MicroLED

Year—>Milestone—>Developer—>Description
2000—>Concept developed—>Hongxing Jiang & Jingyu Lin—>First to propose and demonstrate InGaN-based microLEDs.
2009—>First video-capable microLED display—>Various labs—>Displayed VGA-resolution content.

🧩 9. LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon)

Year—>Milestone—>Developer—>Description
1972—>Early experiments with LCLV—>Hughes Research Laboratories—>Used for projection and optical modulation.
1992—>First ILA projector—>Hughes–JVC—>Commercialization of LCoS projection.
2004–2006—>D-ILA and SXRD projectors—>JVC & Sony—>High-end cinema and home theatre projectors using LCoS.

🗺️ Summary Timeline Chart

Year—>Technology—>Key Event
1897—>CRT—>First cathode ray tube (Braun)
1922—>CRT (monochrome)—>Commercial CRTs introduced
1954—>CRT (color)—>First color TV
1964—>LCD, Plasma—>Both technologies independently prototyped
1968—>LCD (TFT)—>Prototype from RCA
1973—>TFT LCD—>First active matrix LCD
1987—>OLED—>Invention at Kodak
2009—>OLED TV—>Sony XEL-1 released
2000—>MicroLED—>Research begins
2009—>MicroLED display—>First VGA-resolution demo
1992—>LCoS—>ILA projection debuts
2004—>LCoS (SXRD/D-ILA)—>Sony and JVC commercial projectors
**Early television

RCA 630-TS, the first mass-produced electronic television set, which sold in 1946–1947

Mechanical televisions were commercially sold from 1928 to 1934 in the United Kingdom, France,[6] the United States, and the Soviet Union.[7] The earliest commercially made televisions were radios with the addition of a television device consisting of a neon tube behind a mechanically spinning disk with a spiral of apertures that produced a red postage-stamp size image, enlarged to twice that size by a magnifying glass. The Baird “Televisor” (sold in 1930–1933 in the UK) is considered the first mass-produced television, selling about a thousand units.[8]

Karl Ferdinand Braun was the first to conceive the use of a CRT as a display device in 1897.[9] The “Braun tube” became the foundation of 20th century TV.[10] In 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated the first TV system that employed a cathode-ray tube (CRT) display, at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan.[11] This was the first working example of a fully electronic television receiver.[12] His research toward creating a production model was halted by the US after Japan lost World War II.[11]

The first commercially made electronic televisions with CRTs were manufactured by Telefunken in Germany in 1934,[13][14] followed by other makers in France (1936),[15] Britain (1936),[16] and US (1938).[17][18] The cheapest model with a 12-inch (30 cm) screen was $445 (equivalent to $9,940 in 2024).[19] An estimated 19,000 electronic televisions were manufactured in Britain, and about 1,600 in Germany, before World War II. About 7,000–8,000 electronic sets were made in the U.S.[20] before the War Production Board halted manufacture in April 1942, production resuming in August 1945. Television usage in the western world skyrocketed after World War II with the lifting of the manufacturing freeze, war-related technological advances, the drop in television prices caused by mass production, increased leisure time, and additional disposable income. While only 0.5% of U.S. households had a television in 1946, 55.7% had one in 1954, and 90% by 1962.[21] In Britain, there were 15,000 television households in 1947, 1.4 million in 1952, and 15.1 million by 1968.[22]