brianstorms 42 minutes ago

Gosh, it sure seems like this author got a lot of this history from the "Gas and Glass" chapter of my book THE FRIENDLY ORANGE GLOW (Pantheon Books, 2017), which is a history of the PLATO system including the invention of the plasma display. Or maybe he got it from an AI that got it from vacuuming up my book.

Funny how the article has zero citations or notes.

So it goes.

  • rafterydj 29 minutes ago

    Sorry to hear that. So disappointed in the AI companies for making no serious efforts towards transparency for the citation of works and prior art.

jjwiseman 15 minutes ago

When I started at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne in 1988, the computer labs were still filled with PLATO terminals. They were extremely cool--nice displays, and many were also touch screens. I did my physics homework on them, and played games but I definitely didn't use them to their full extent.

Looking at photos of them now they appear blocky and relatively ugly, but I remember them fondly.

msarnoff an hour ago

Orange dot-matrix gas plasma displays were used on pinball machines for over 2 decades before the manufacturers switched to colour LCD screens. Now instead of clever pixel art and high legibility we have cheesy CGI and so much information on screen that I have no idea what to shoot for…

farmin an hour ago

I loved my 50ish inch Panasonic plasma tv. It’s still used in our cottage. The blacks are deep, no blur and remote control response was instant unlike a lot of modern smart tvs.

  • SaucyWrong 43 minutes ago

    Me too, I have a 15 year old Panasonic 60” that I’m still daily driving until the proverbial wheels fall off. I’m not looking forward to tv shopping in the smart-garbage-infested marketplace of today…

  • CPLX 31 minutes ago

    Yeah, I had a Panasonic plasma too the picture was so much better (well in many ways at least) than the new generation. It seemed a lot more "analog" for lack of a better term.

superkuh an hour ago

Plasma screens, like computer case windows, are incredibly rude but the people using them have no idea that their behavior is inappropriate. Both emit significant amounts of HF radio interference which bounces around the ionosphere degrading a shared resource for all of Earth. And even more VHF and up interference which only degrades a shared resource till the next hill. It's pretty much just like littering in a public park.

  • SaucyWrong 33 minutes ago

    I was surprised to learn this just now.

    • akersten 10 minutes ago

      probably un learn it, it's cap