In a color CRT there are trios of phosphor dots (one red, one blue, one green). There are three beams (one for each color) which are deflected simultaneously by the same magnetic fields. Again, those dots are adhered to the inside of the screen and need no further mechanical support.

There is a thing called a shadow mask which is a thin metal sheet with a corresponding hole for each dot trio. This blocks the beams from getting through except during those instants when they are aimed by the deflection fields so as to land exactly on the intended dot instead of somewhere between a couple of them. The Trinitron uses a variation of this scheme that uses rectangular holes instead of round ones, and 2 or 3 thin vertical wires to help support the very thin shadow mask.

In order to get the same brightness out of a phosphor dot you have to hit it with the same amount of energy. If you can do that with more electrons (greater current), but a lower anode voltage (resulting in less acceleration) and a power supply with lower internal resistence so that you can get more current with a lower voltage, you might be able to deliver the same amount of energy with a lower chance of X-radiation, but I'm going to have to drag out several more old books to be sure about that.

That power supply with lower internal resistance will be more expensive, however.

The reason monitors went from digital to analog in the first place was because sending from video card to monitor digitally and then converting to analog inside the monitor meant adding more wires to the cable between the video card and the monitor in order to use more digital bits per pixel.

The electron guns (one for each color) are part of the cathode ray tube. All the stuff inside the cathode ray tube, including any electron guns, are fairly light, being made out of thin pieces of metal. The heavy part of the CRT is the glass. The rest of the heavy part is the metal chassis and the other components outside of the CRT, especially the coils and transformers that *do* have iron cores.

Way back in the day televisions had, in addition to the cathode ray tube with ten or more thousand volts potential on its anode, another tube, the damper diode, that also had an anode voltage in the kiloVolt range, and a law or regulation was made mandating a metal cage around that tube to prevent it from X-radiating the general area.

There's enough weight in the circuitry external to the crt which is in the back part of the monitor to counterbalance the weight of the front of the crt (which is where most of the weight of a crt is).

Admittedly trying to lift some of those puppies may be enough to make you think that there's a lead brick inside.

The material used as the dielectric in the several electrolytic capacitors can leak out and eat away the copper traces even while the unit is in use so it probably isn't something that you want leaching into the water supply either.

The various nasty chemicals used in the construction of the monitor and the parts that go into it are probably as great an evironmental hazard as is the monitor once it winds up in a landfill.

Fortunately, some IBM'ers actually visit this site and got this mess squared away pretty quickly. The result? /. uses the official IBM logo provided by IBM (IIRC).

See here [slashdot.org] for the resolution of this crisis. BTW, no need to Borg-ify IBM at this time

There are a handful of citations about the patents involved in this innovation at the uspto [164.195.100.11] and at ibm.com [ibm.com].

Beeteson has written a book called Visualizing Magnetic Fields [amazon.com]. It got some favorable reviews at amazon.com. Hey, wait a minute, those cheery reviews are by his co-patent-holders, Drs Knox and Lowe. Dude. Might be a page turner, you never know.

I've been following the progress of Telegen [telegendisplays.com] for quite some time. They've been showing their technology on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show for the past few years.

And hopefully the weight? 21" is probably a little above what most people want to lug around.
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In a traditional CRT, there is one beam that is shared with all the pixels. So there can't be any mechanical supports anywhere inside the tube that would interfere with the beam. In the flat CRT, each pixel has its own beam. This means there can be mechanical support around each and every pixel. It is still 14 pounds per square inch, but a lot fewer square inches per pixel.

Likewise, in a traditional million pixel monitor, each pixel is only on one one millionth of the time. In the flat screen CRT, each pixel is on all the time, so the beam can be one million times weaker, for the same brightness.

Weaker beams, fewer X-rays.

On a more serious note, I recently got a Viewsonic 19" monitor on pricewatch for $280. Once you can run 1600x1200 on a decent sized display, it's pretty hard to go back to a 15" one. I don't care if it is flat. If I could get a 19" to 21" monitor in the CRT price range (21" is still a bit pricey for a good one) I'd be very happy. This article is talking about the potential of making projection sized displays! Even better! I'd love to have a data wall!

Take a small stick. Bend it until it breaks. Now get a bundle of sticks and apply approximately the same effort in bending. Betcha it doesn't break.

:-)

What makes CRTs so heavy anyway? It can't just be the glass. Would something like this reduce the weight, or are they just shifting around whatever it is that makes them so damn heavy?

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Hmmm. If it is the glass that's mostly the weight, then do you need the glass to be as thick? On the one hand, it seems like you wouldn't need as much "vacuum volume". But on the other hand, does the volume matter? If you have a vacuum on the other side of the glass, it should be the same amount of air pressure on the other side regardless of the depth. So maybe the glass needs to be just as thick.

It would kind of suck to have a 90 pound 21" monitor 2 centimeters thick, and have it fall forward into your lap. The base would need to take up pretty much the same amount of space as a standard monitor. Kind of defeats the purpose. :)

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Disclaimer: I haven't read the linked-to stories, so take this with a grain of salt.

I hope this technology makes it out into the consumer market and gives LCD panels a run for the money-- my main gripe with LCD panels is that they don't handle non-native resolutions gracefully. But if this is true CRT-like technology, we'll finally have the best of both worlds (great support for various resolutions, and the thin form factor!).

Plus the other applications for this, high-resolution replacements for television sets, can't be beat. The large plasma displays (which admittedly probably look better than a large CRT would) may have fallen in price, but a large CRT with this new technology would probably be cheaper for the masses.

Kudos to IBM, let's just hope that the fact that they've gotten a patent on this tech doesn't keep others from using it.

This is gamers' heaven if the technology performs as well as conventional CRTs.

Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:

At any rate, this system shouldn't need lead shielding. If I understand it, it forms many little beams (one per pixel), which are not steered and travel less than an inch. So it should only need a few volts to operate, and the most powerful photons that can form will be ultraviolet, which is easily stopped by many kinds of lead-free glass or by the opaque back cover.

IMHO, lead from electronics is far from my greatest worry about landfills. (I am not a chemist, but I do know a few things.) Metallic lead only dissolves in acids, and lead glass from CRT's should be even less soluble. There are also a few ounces of 63% lead solder in a typical computer, but people have lived with much larger quantities of lead for millenia and usually avoided poisoning themselves. There is at least 2,000 years of history for lead pipes for drinking water (from liners for Roman aquaducts starting before 100BC to American city water systems in the early 1900's). Chances are these lead pipes haven't yet been all replaced in some of our cities -- and in other cities, they ripped them out and tossed them into the nearest landfill... But you won't find lead in the water coming out of a lead pipe unless the water is far more acidic than drinking water ought to be. Landfills might be more likely to have acid groundwater, but they ought to be ensuring that acid water doesn't leak out anyhow -- and when the acidity is neutralized, the lead compounds drop out of solution and don't travel any further. I'd worry more about the more unusual metals being touted as replacements for lead in solder -- some of them have never been widely used before, and there are probably things we don't know and won't know until too many people have been exposed to them for 20 years...

That may be true, but in reality every screen size has an 'ideal' resolution. It's nice to be able to play around with resolutions, but when you want to work, there's is usually one ideal resolution that's best for the specific screen size.

Furthermore, LCD's have some pro's when compared to CRT's:

- no harmful radiation (CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube, LCD just uses some backlighting with 'normal' light)

- lends itself perfectly for even better font smoothing (like the ClearType smoothing in, sorry I have to say, Windows XP)

On the other hand, CRT's are still better in color handling. Although the LCD on my sony picturebook gives WAY better image and color than my 6 year old 17" CTX monitor, in print shops CRT's still seem to only way (high end CRT's, that is, not the $250 crap 17" monitors you can get everywhere nowadays).

Needless to say I'm curious to see these hit our local VARs and at what prices.

-Coach-

They also mentioned (and that's most important), that most companies do have (possibly very) short CRT tubes, but that the heat is the biggest problem. Ever since CRT's started burning (in standby mode e.g.) sporadically, companies are very affraid of bringing new technologies to the market that might have a slight heat problem.

One burning television/ monitor is enough to "kill" a brand, and all the bad publicity that it brought with it is enough to frighten these companies to not sell these CRTs.

These employees didn't actually work for the CRT department, so I can't verify if there really is a risk of "overheating", but the problem seemed plausible.