Despite the incessant technological advancements on consumer electronic appliance such as the television, there has been one major existing influential innovation that marked the modernity of television screens and will ceaselessly remain for the coming years. This is the flat-panel television display, or commonly called the flatscreen display. Today, you would rarely find traditional bulky cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions on sale because everything that is available for consumers to employ is a wide selection of flat-screen TVs (LCD TV, HDTV, LED TV, etc.).
It was in 1964 when the first flatscreen display called the plasma display panel was invented. It was the brainchild of two professors and a graduate student of the University of Illinois, namely Donald Bitzer, Gene Slottow, and Robert Wilson respectively. This technology was invented through utilizing electrically charged ionized gases in between two glass panels. Although there wasn’t much difference between the picture quality between a CRT TV and flatscreen TV, the latter was still the best portable alternative for the former television type.
Another issue the team faced was, the flatscreen TVs were not yet economical for mass production so the project didn’t push through with global overture. It was only in 1997 when a prototype of the 1964 flatscreen display monitor was developed and publicized by Larry Weber, an American electrical engineer who worked for Panasonic. He was then given the privilege to be the director of the Plasma Display Research Group in the University of Illinois and is still dedicated to find improvements for the plasma TV.
Right now, the term “flatscreen TV” is wide-ranging because all the latest technologies support everything that is on flat panel display and to assert that a unit is the best flatscreen TV depends on its central features. The plasma TV, LCD TV, LED TV, HDTV, 3DTV—they are all flatscreen TVs. For sure in the coming years, another television technology will take place all that exist but the flat panel display will remain as it is, unless someone would invent a light-source beam way of watching television shows like what we see in sci-fi movies.
If you’re on a limited budget, you can haggle a 32” LCD TV less than $500. But if you are easy on the dollar, the latest 3DTV may be your best bet. So, whatever you choose and can afford, you’ll still get to experience the premium contemporary television watching through the technology put in to make a flatscreen TV happen.
The flatscreen display is truly a remarkable invention, a representation that our world is evolving in all aspects.