Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: Tech are Ya. So in the late nineteen nineties, televisions
Speaker 1: were changing, specifically here in America, but all around the world.
Speaker 1: So here in America we were used to big old
Speaker 1: CRT televisions that's cathode ray tube TVs to you and me.
Speaker 1: And they were real chonkers, bulky, they were heavy. They
Speaker 1: contained capacitors that remained dangerous even after you turned the
Speaker 1: television off. By the way, that's one reason to not
Speaker 1: smash an old TV. If they're still charge stored in
Speaker 1: the capacitors, you could get a real jolt, like a
Speaker 1: deadly one. Televisions at that time had a four to
Speaker 1: three aspect ratio in those days. That means for every
Speaker 1: three units of height, you had four units of width.
Speaker 1: That's why if you watch any old television programming today
Speaker 1: on a modern TV, and if that programming hasn't been
Speaker 1: adjusted to fit a modern television, there is always space
Speaker 1: on either side of the screen. Resolution was, you know,
Speaker 1: not great. If you wanted a really nice home entertainment system.
Speaker 1: You often leaned heavily on the other components to help
Speaker 1: pick up some of the slack you might have, like
Speaker 1: a projection television, maybe a rear projection television. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these things were huge. But that would really change in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven or so with the introduction of flat
Speaker 1: screen televisions, led by a technology that took a different
Speaker 1: approach to creating images. So with a CRT, you're using
Speaker 1: a zapper, an electron gun, and it fires a stream
Speaker 1: of electrons at the backside of a screen, and that
Speaker 1: backside of the screen is coded in phosphor dots. And
Speaker 1: when the elect trunds hit the phosphors, it excites the
Speaker 1: phosphors and they end up glowing as they let out
Speaker 1: this excess energy. They luminess. But this new technology was
Speaker 1: using a different method to generate that light. It was
Speaker 1: using an excitable gas that could then be precision controlled
Speaker 1: by tiny electrodes. So this was the introduction of the
Speaker 1: plasma television. Now these days, plasma televisions are kind of
Speaker 1: like antiques or collector's items. No one is making them anymore.
Speaker 1: In fact, the last major companies to make plasma televisions
Speaker 1: stopped doing it in twenty fourteen, so it's been a
Speaker 1: decade since these were consumer items. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: still find them occasionally, but no one's making them for
Speaker 1: a while. However, plasma television was in the running for
Speaker 1: like the best television technology on the market. So I
Speaker 1: thought we could talk about where this idea came from
Speaker 1: and then what happened to plasma TVs. So we gotta
Speaker 1: start a ways back, like sixty years ago, in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, and y'all, I'm going to just give highlights,
Speaker 1: but if you want a real breakdown on the development
Speaker 1: of the plasma display and the various technological challenges that
Speaker 1: needed to be solved to make it a possibility, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend you search for a white paper, an article rather,
Speaker 1: and it's titled History of the Plasma Display Panel. It's
Speaker 1: by Larry F. Weber Weber of I Triple E, or
Speaker 1: as I used to say AE, and this article was
Speaker 1: published in a journal called Transactions on Plasma Science. This
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand and six. So knowing that
Speaker 1: it was back in two thousand and six when this
Speaker 1: was written, you need to forgive opening passages that say
Speaker 1: things like quote, plasma displays are enjoying an unprecedented degree
Speaker 1: of success as large screen televisions. End quote. Because that
Speaker 1: was true in two thousand and six. These days not
Speaker 1: so much. But despite the fact that you know it
Speaker 1: has that dated reference, I mean it was written in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, the article itself phenomenal. I'll be
Speaker 1: referencing it a lot in this episode, and I highly
Speaker 1: recommend if you're more interested in the technical details that
Speaker 1: you check it out. It's great. So, as Weber points out,
Speaker 1: the early development of plasma displays, that work wasn't being
Speaker 1: done with home television as being an end goal. In fact,
Speaker 1: it wasn't even in the thought process at the time necessarily. Instead,
Speaker 1: this was part of an effort to develop computer systems
Speaker 1: that could be used for the purposes of education. So,
Speaker 1: how do you make a high resolution display for educational
Speaker 1: computer systems and do so in a way that makes
Speaker 1: sense doesn't break the bank. So engineers and researchers at
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois launched a project called the Programmed
Speaker 1: Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, or PLATO. This was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty when they first formed this project, and plato's
Speaker 1: main aim was to research the possibilit of using computer
Speaker 1: systems for educational purposes. Now today, millions of students around
Speaker 1: the world do their homework on computers. They get class
Speaker 1: assignments on computers. Computers are like an integral part of
Speaker 1: education for lots of schools around the world. However, back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty computers were still these big, centralized machines
Speaker 1: that very few people had ever seen, let alone used.
Speaker 1: If you were a computer science student, or you know,
Speaker 1: if you worked at a research lab or perhaps some
Speaker 1: military installation, then maybe you had some contact with computers.
Speaker 1: I mean computer science, certainly you would have some contact.
Speaker 1: But other than that, these were things that you heard
Speaker 1: about but you never really encountered. Even as computers began
Speaker 1: to make their way into the business world, very few
Speaker 1: people still actually had the chance to get their hands
Speaker 1: on them because these were still largely centralized machines. That
Speaker 1: would pretty much remain the case until micro computers came
Speaker 1: on the scene in the seventies and eighties. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the folks on the Plato project were forward thinkers, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, Donald L. Bitzer and Jene Slatto,
Speaker 1: both of whom were professors at the University of Illinois,
Speaker 1: and apologies for my terrible pronunciation, but they, along with
Speaker 1: a graduate student named Robert Wilson, tackled this challenge of
Speaker 1: building a new display system that would be suitable for
Speaker 1: the latest iteration of the project's computer, which at that
Speaker 1: point was the Plato three. They were up to the
Speaker 1: third generation of this computer system. So this next bit
Speaker 1: gets technical, but it's also an example of a fortuitous
Speaker 1: discovery that only happened because of an accident. As doctor
Speaker 1: Frankenfurter would say, So, okay, it's the nineteen sixties swing
Speaker 1: in sixties and semiconductor based memory has yet to really
Speaker 1: become a thing, so that's not really an accessible technology
Speaker 1: if you're designing a computer system. Still, your graphics displays
Speaker 1: need access to memory in order to you know, display
Speaker 1: stuff like bitmaps, so it's not just like a blip
Speaker 1: on the screen. It's actually a sustained image. So a
Speaker 1: bitmap is literally just a map of bits that represent light,
Speaker 1: and older displays relied upon an external scan converter memory
Speaker 1: tube in order to achieve this memory. These things, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're external, so they're not part of the system itself.
Speaker 1: They were bulky, They were expensive, and they were kind
Speaker 1: of limiting in order to actually have this computer memory.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. So the team was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to achieve memory internally in the
Speaker 1: display itself and they started to work with neon. Now,
Speaker 1: this neon depended upon a vacuum system for it to work,
Speaker 1: but it turned out that the system they were using
Speaker 1: as they were developing this display actually had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a leak in it. And that's the accident
Speaker 1: I was talking about. There was a leak in the
Speaker 1: vacuum system and that allowed some air to mix with
Speaker 1: the neon. However, that turned out to actually be beneficial
Speaker 1: to the project because when the neon gas with this
Speaker 1: mix of air in it would be excited, it would
Speaker 1: emit an orange glow. Now, normally, if it were just
Speaker 1: pure neon, if there were no other gases mixing with
Speaker 1: the neon, that glowing would stop once the excited electrons
Speaker 1: returned to their normal state. Essentially, once the electric charge
Speaker 1: was turned off, it would just stop glowing. However, that
Speaker 1: mixed air caused something interesting, and that's hysteresis. And if
Speaker 1: you're wondering what the heck that is, allow me to explain,
Speaker 1: because I just learned about it myself, So I know
Speaker 1: about this, but I didn't know the word for it.
Speaker 1: So hysteresis refers to the tendency of some phenomena to
Speaker 1: linger after the cause of that phenomena has already gone. So,
Speaker 1: for example, let's say you make an electromagnet out of
Speaker 1: an iron nail and some copper wire, and you coil
Speaker 1: the copper wire around the nail. You connect the wire
Speaker 1: to a battery. You got yourself an electromagnet, and you
Speaker 1: use it for a while to pick up paper clips
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then maybe once you're done, you've disconnected
Speaker 1: the wire from the battery, you've taken the nail out
Speaker 1: of the coil. Maybe you notice that, hey, this nail
Speaker 1: still is displaying some magnetic qualities that can still pick
Speaker 1: up paper clips, even though it's no longer inside the
Speaker 1: coil with electricity running through it. It's no longer an electromagnet.
Speaker 1: It's acting more like a magnet. Well, that's hysteresis. The
Speaker 1: electric current that generated the magnetic field is gone, but
Speaker 1: the nail retains some magnetism, at least for a while.
Speaker 1: It does fade over time and eventually just becomes a nail.
Speaker 1: So with the neon display, the mixed and air caused
Speaker 1: the neon to remain lit up after the charge had left,
Speaker 1: so the display kind of had a memory, so to speak.
Speaker 1: That was the solution to their problem, and again it
Speaker 1: was all due to an accident. So this discovery prompted
Speaker 1: the researchers to change their approach. They would purposefully introduce
Speaker 1: a tiny bit of nitrogen into the neon gas in
Speaker 1: order to accomplish on purpose what had first happened by accident,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty darn cool story. I love stories
Speaker 1: like that where you know, surely we would have arrived
Speaker 1: at this discovery at some point, but the fact that
Speaker 1: it happened by sort of luck, and in what you
Speaker 1: would first think was bad luck because it relies on
Speaker 1: your equipment not working the way it was intended to that,
Speaker 1: to me is pretty cool. Now. I think it also
Speaker 1: helps if we consider for a moment how plasma displays work,
Speaker 1: like that's going to help us understand a lot about
Speaker 1: this topic. So let's get to some basics. Images on
Speaker 1: televisions and other displays, those are made up of pixels,
Speaker 1: and you can think of pixels as being kind of
Speaker 1: like at it's a basic unit of light. On a screen,
Speaker 1: it's a point of light. So the full screen is
Speaker 1: made up of thousands or millions of pixels, depending upon
Speaker 1: the resolution of your screen. Typically, these pixels have one
Speaker 1: of three colors associated with them, red, green, or blue.
Speaker 1: Or they have subpixels like little cells filled with red phosphor,
Speaker 1: green phosphor or blue phosphor. These RGB pixels are spread
Speaker 1: evenly across the screen, so by controlling the brightness the
Speaker 1: luminosity of each of those three colors, you can show
Speaker 1: potentially millions of different shades of color. If you light
Speaker 1: all three of those subpixels equally, you get white, right.
Speaker 1: If you like none of them, you get black. If
Speaker 1: you like combinations of them at different intensities, like you know,
Speaker 1: like forty percent red, ten percent blue, etea that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, then you can get lots of other different
Speaker 1: colors represented on screen. In a plasma television, the pixels
Speaker 1: are made up of individual cells that are sandwich between
Speaker 1: other layers. I'll give you the typical outline of how
Speaker 1: this works, because it depends specifically on the manufacturer and
Speaker 1: what method they used, but generally speaking, we can get
Speaker 1: an idea of how this works. But inside these individual
Speaker 1: cells that are sandwiched between other layers, you have an
Speaker 1: ionized gas. In other words, of plasma. Plasma is the
Speaker 1: most plentiful state of matter in the universe. So when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I was taught about three states
Speaker 1: of matter, solid liquid, gas. Plasma is technically a fourth
Speaker 1: state of matter. It's a special kind of gas. It's
Speaker 1: a gas that has free floating electrons, which means that
Speaker 1: can do stuff like conduct electricity. Stars are made out
Speaker 1: of plasma. Anyway, if you have plasma in a contained environment,
Speaker 1: like an enclosed air type tube, and you apply voltage
Speaker 1: to this tube, then you have electrons that are rushing around,
Speaker 1: and you have positively charged atoms rushing around, and the
Speaker 1: electrons are heading to the positively charged atoms, and the
Speaker 1: positively charged atoms are heading toward the negatively charged electrons.
Speaker 1: Because you know, opposite charges attract and when they collide,
Speaker 1: you get excited atoms, and those atoms eventually let out
Speaker 1: some of that excess energy in the form of photons
Speaker 1: aka light. Now, with a lot of gases, the light
Speaker 1: that's being released is actually invisible to us. It's in
Speaker 1: the ultraviolet range, so we cannot directly perceive this light. However,
Speaker 1: in turn, this ultraviolet light can excite special atoms called phosphors,
Speaker 1: and some phosphors can emit light that is within the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum. So you excite the gas atoms and you
Speaker 1: get ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet light in turn excites the phosphors,
Speaker 1: and then you get visible light. Okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break here. When we get back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that sandwich I mentioned earlier, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to try not to have my stomach growl
Speaker 1: because it's also lunchtime sandwiches. We'll be right back. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. I still haven't eaten lunch, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna see how this goes. But if we do
Speaker 1: think of a plasma display as a kind of sandwich,
Speaker 1: the typical description of plasma displays goes something like this.
Speaker 1: Your bottom piece of bread. The base of your sandwich
Speaker 1: is a plate of glass, which I admit does not
Speaker 1: sound that appetizing. On top of this plate of glass,
Speaker 1: you have a series of vertically aligned electrodes, so they're
Speaker 1: columns of electrodes. This is called the address electrodes. Then
Speaker 1: you would have the layer of cells that contain the
Speaker 1: gas that can be turned into a plasma once you
Speaker 1: apply voltage to this gas, plus the cells that have
Speaker 1: the subpixels coated in red, green, or blue phosphors, each
Speaker 1: one assigned to one of the these cells of gas.
Speaker 1: Then you have another layer that's a clear magnesium oxide layer.
Speaker 1: This is to protect the next layer, which is another
Speaker 1: layer of electrodes. Now these are arranged at a ninety
Speaker 1: degree angle compared to the first ones. The address electrodes
Speaker 1: that are on the bottom right, So these are in rows.
Speaker 1: These are the display electrodes, and they by necessity need
Speaker 1: to be transparent because the light needs to be able
Speaker 1: to go through them in order for you to see
Speaker 1: what's on a display. So now you actually have a
Speaker 1: grid of electrodes. Right, You've got some that are running
Speaker 1: along the bottom and vertical columns and some that are
Speaker 1: running on the top and horizontal rows. Next you have
Speaker 1: a dielectric material that insulates those display electrodes. And finally
Speaker 1: you have the front plate of glasses the top slice
Speaker 1: of bread on your sandwich. These displays are able to
Speaker 1: send a specific voltage to a pair of electrodes at
Speaker 1: a specific point on the display. You can think of
Speaker 1: the display as just being a series of xy coordinates,
Speaker 1: so you can see and end a voltage signal to
Speaker 1: that pair of electrodes specifically at one location on the
Speaker 1: screen in order for them to excite the gas inside
Speaker 1: the cell, which then of course gives off ultraviolet light,
Speaker 1: which in turn excites the phosphors coding the subpixels for
Speaker 1: that cell, and then you get a point of light
Speaker 1: on the display. Of course, this is actually happening at
Speaker 1: different points all across the display at the same time,
Speaker 1: and it's rapidly changing, right. That's how you get your
Speaker 1: moving plasma image. All of those points of light on
Speaker 1: a plasma display are coming from specific voltages applied at
Speaker 1: precise locations on that grid of electrodes, thus exciting the
Speaker 1: gas in that spot that then excites the phosphors, which
Speaker 1: to me is super cool. Like, that's such a neat
Speaker 1: approach to creating an image on a screen. I just
Speaker 1: think it's incredibly interesting. I don't know, maybe it's just
Speaker 1: because I'm a geek. Now, one benefit to this approach
Speaker 1: is that you don't need as much depth to your
Speaker 1: display as you would with a CRT, so remember I
Speaker 1: said that CRT televisions are chonky. Well, a cathode ray
Speaker 1: two displays width determines how deep it has to be
Speaker 1: because the wider the screen is, the longer the tube
Speaker 1: needs to be in order for the electron gun to
Speaker 1: be able to reach across the entire width of the screen. Like,
Speaker 1: larger screens get really super bulky. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: having a projector, right, Like if you have a projector
Speaker 1: and you're too close to a screen, well, the image
Speaker 1: that you're projecting isn't going to take up the whole screen.
Speaker 1: It's just going to take a part of it. You
Speaker 1: have to move the projector back in order for it
Speaker 1: to take up the whole screen. Same thing with these
Speaker 1: cathode ray tube electron guns. They need to be a
Speaker 1: certain distance from the back of the screen in order
Speaker 1: to illuminate the whole thing. So the bigger your screen is,
Speaker 1: the further back the electron gun needs to be, so
Speaker 1: the larger the television would get. And you just get
Speaker 1: these enormous, heavy, bulky TVs and it wouldn't make sense
Speaker 1: beyond a certain amount, which is why you would get
Speaker 1: like projection televisions instead. If you want a really big screen,
Speaker 1: you need to either have a projector and a screen,
Speaker 1: or you needed to have like rear projection, which was
Speaker 1: still bulky, but not as big as if it were CRT.
Speaker 1: So plasma displays didn't need to have so much depth
Speaker 1: to them because the electrode grid does the same job
Speaker 1: that the electron gun did in a CRT essentially, and
Speaker 1: so plasma displays could be much thinner than CRTs were now.
Speaker 1: By much thinner, I do mean, they still were thick
Speaker 1: compared to the flat screen televisions you would buy today.
Speaker 1: Like we're talking like six inches thick. That's still pretty
Speaker 1: hefty if you compare it to the sort of stuff
Speaker 1: you can buy, you know, in a store today. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of the latest televisions are incredibly thin, but back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, a six inch deep TV that
Speaker 1: was velt. Anyway, It obviously would take quite some time
Speaker 1: between pioneering this technology in nineteen sixty four and seeing
Speaker 1: plasma televisions available in stores around nineteen ninety seven. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like three decades of time. So let's go back
Speaker 1: to the history for a bit to look at some
Speaker 1: of the milestones that led the way. Now as Weber
Speaker 1: points out in that excellent article I mentioned at the
Speaker 1: top of the show the plasma display researchers at the
Speaker 1: University of Illinois. The thing they built it was great
Speaker 1: for establishing that this was a viable technology, but their
Speaker 1: display was a far cry from being suitable for commercial
Speaker 1: or consumer applications. For one thing, the display itself measured
Speaker 1: a total of one inch per side, so a one
Speaker 1: inch by one inch screen. I think we can both
Speaker 1: agree that's a bit on the small side, right. But
Speaker 1: for another, it was made of some really fragile material,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't stand up to any sort of rigorous
Speaker 1: shipping for example, much less like if you had kids
Speaker 1: or pets, or maybe you like to play the Wii
Speaker 1: and you don't use the risks straps, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're instructed to come on be more responsible gamers. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was also kind of cluged together, this prototype display.
Speaker 1: It had like really visible epoxy holding it together, and
Speaker 1: they had problems with leaks and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: in short, the display panel showed that plasma displays could work,
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of challenges that would need
Speaker 1: to be addressed before it could approach being a reliable
Speaker 1: display option, let alone a consumer television. So development continued
Speaker 1: and within just a couple of years there were some
Speaker 1: breakthroughs that saw massive improvements in design and that led
Speaker 1: to the ability to do a little bit more streamline
Speaker 1: manufacturing and the displays were able to develop. As a result,
Speaker 1: they were still small, and they still had fairly low resolution,
Speaker 1: but the improvements showed that plasma based displays could in
Speaker 1: fact be a reality. Each success drove more innovation in
Speaker 1: the space and allowed for larger displays with greater resolution.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen seventy one, a glass company called Owen's
Speaker 1: Illinois was able to produce the first commercial plasma display.
Speaker 1: Now by today's standards, this was a pretty low resolution display.
Speaker 1: It measured only five hundred twelve by five hundred twelve pixels,
Speaker 1: so that meant the display had a little more than
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty thousand pixels in total if you
Speaker 1: were to add them all up. Future high definition plasma
Speaker 1: televisions could have as many as more than two million pixels.
Speaker 1: But still, this twelve inch display made by Owens Illinois
Speaker 1: was a big deal, and the Plato Project at the
Speaker 1: University of Illinois became the first customer to order these
Speaker 1: displays as part of their Plato Educational Computer System project,
Speaker 1: and as Weber points out, it was a remarkably quick
Speaker 1: turnaround to go from the first implementation of the technology
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four to a finished product in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. I mean that's like, well seven years, that's
Speaker 1: really fast for a brand new technology to go from
Speaker 1: we just proved that this works to here's a product
Speaker 1: based on that tech. Many other technical issues had to
Speaker 1: be solved for plasma TVs to become a practical possibility, Like,
Speaker 1: even with the advancements that had been done by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, we were a far cry from something that
Speaker 1: would be acceptable in a home. For one thing, the
Speaker 1: early displays were monochromatic, right, like, they did not have
Speaker 1: full color capability for the earliest versions. It would take
Speaker 1: some time to develop that. And even with chromatic displays,
Speaker 1: there were still challenges. One of those was solving for
Speaker 1: gray scale right, different levels of brightness so that you
Speaker 1: could have something between the brightest bright and the darkest dark.
Speaker 1: So in the early days of plasma displays, a pixel
Speaker 1: could either be on or it could be off. It
Speaker 1: was either as bright as it could be or it
Speaker 1: was dark. You had nothing in between, so there was
Speaker 1: no way of showing any kind of resolution within an image.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies, companies like Hitachi and Mitsubishi
Speaker 1: came up with a method to deal with this, and
Speaker 1: essentially it involved cutting down the length of time each
Speaker 1: pixel would fire, so you would create like pulses that
Speaker 1: would light up a pixel, and to make a pixel
Speaker 1: less bright, you would just pulse it less frequently, and
Speaker 1: that would make it appear to be dimmer than the
Speaker 1: neighboring pixels and thus would allow for grayscale. It was
Speaker 1: known as the address while display method the AWD method,
Speaker 1: and it would remain in use for several years before
Speaker 1: engineers found alternative methods to achieve similar results. Now to
Speaker 1: get color displays rather than monochromatic ones, engineers figured out
Speaker 1: that placing little glass ribs in between the subpixels was key,
Speaker 1: otherwise you would get these weird kind of saturated images.
Speaker 1: Everything would come across kind of pastel. You didn't get
Speaker 1: very vibrant color representation in early color plasma displays because
Speaker 1: there was all this bleeding that was going on between
Speaker 1: different pixels. So by adding these thin panels of glass.
Speaker 1: It meant that each color of phosphors, the red, the green,
Speaker 1: and the blue phosphors would kind of have their own
Speaker 1: mini cell that was bordered by these thin glass panels.
Speaker 1: So why was this important, Well, it's because ultraviolet light
Speaker 1: doesn't travel through glass, so it became possible to more
Speaker 1: precisely control which phosphors would be excited by ultraviolet light
Speaker 1: and thus phosphores and so you could be much more
Speaker 1: precise with which colors are being activated. And with that control,
Speaker 1: you got more accurate color representation on the screen and
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about pixels bleeding over into
Speaker 1: each other because you were able to prevent that due
Speaker 1: to these glass panels blocking the ultraviolet light that otherwise
Speaker 1: would excite phosphors and cause them to discharge. So again,
Speaker 1: very clever solution to a problem, creating these these glass ribs,
Speaker 1: that's what they called them. So in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: the Japanese Broadcast Corporation, which has the initialism NHK, built
Speaker 1: a prototype full color plasma television. Way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. It measured sixteen inches on the diagonal, and
Speaker 1: this was a concept. It wasn't meant for manufacturing as
Speaker 1: an end product. It was not ready for mass manufacturing.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of a proof of concept television,
Speaker 1: and it showed the possibilities of a flatter TV, which
Speaker 1: really excited manufacturers. I mean, these would be electronics that
Speaker 1: could take up less space and perhaps be thin enough
Speaker 1: where you could even mount it to your wall, kind
Speaker 1: of like a picture frame. That was, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a dream back in the nineteen seventies. Otherwise, what
Speaker 1: you're going to have to do is cut a hole
Speaker 1: in your wall, mount a CRT so that the screen
Speaker 1: points through the hole, and hope that your wall is
Speaker 1: thick enough to hold the rest of the CRT. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you have the back end of a television sticking into
Speaker 1: the kitchen or something. So it would take nearly two
Speaker 1: decades before we would actually get to the first consumer
Speaker 1: plasma televisions after NHK introduced this prototype, but again, the
Speaker 1: prototype showed the possibility of what could be further in
Speaker 1: the future. Other challenges involved figuring out how to protect
Speaker 1: phosphors from degradation, so early plasma displays had issues with luminescence.
Speaker 1: In fact, all plasma displays due to some degree, and
Speaker 1: part of the problem was that the displays would grow
Speaker 1: more dim as they were used more, particularly for plasma
Speaker 1: displays that used alternating current. And let me explain why
Speaker 1: that was. So. With direct current, you have two electrodes, right,
Speaker 1: You've got one that's always the cathode, and then you
Speaker 1: have another electrode and it's always the anode. Well, the
Speaker 1: cathode generates ions, and those ions could damage phosphors. So
Speaker 1: when you were designing a DC based plasma display, it
Speaker 1: only made sense to put the phosphors closer to the
Speaker 1: anode side than the cathode side, because you were distancing
Speaker 1: them from these ions, and it meant that they were
Speaker 1: less likely to get damage and thus lose some of
Speaker 1: their luminescence in the process. However, AC alternating current based
Speaker 1: plasma displays had a problem because with alternating current, the
Speaker 1: role of cathode and anode switches places between the electrodes
Speaker 1: many times a second, and this is the alternating bit
Speaker 1: of alternating current. Right, The cathode and anode swap multiple
Speaker 1: times a second, So the electrode that serves as the
Speaker 1: cathode one moment becomes the anode the next moment. But
Speaker 1: this meant that you couldn't just put the phosphors closer
Speaker 1: to one electrode rather than the other, because both of
Speaker 1: the electrodes are the cathode at some point many times
Speaker 1: per second. Fujitsu came up with a solution by placing
Speaker 1: the two sets of electrodes closer to one another, separated
Speaker 1: by a dielectric layer to prevent electrical shorts, and the
Speaker 1: phosphors would, rather than being in between the two layers,
Speaker 1: would kind of be above them, and the electric fields
Speaker 1: generated by those elects would be enough to excite the
Speaker 1: gas within the cells that were positioned above this very
Speaker 1: tight sandwich of electrodes, the phosphors could have the distance
Speaker 1: needed to protect them from those pesky ions. Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got a couple more things to say about the limitations
Speaker 1: of plasma displays as well as their ultimate fate, but
Speaker 1: before we get to all that, let's take another quick break. Okay.
Speaker 1: I mentioned before the break that there were other issues
Speaker 1: with plasma displays, and I kind of mentioned one. Degradation
Speaker 1: is related to this, but it's in general, it's just brightness.
Speaker 1: So plasma displays they just had a limit to how
Speaker 1: bright they could be. Luminosity would be an issue for
Speaker 1: plasma displays throughout their history. If you were to compare
Speaker 1: a plasma display to an alternative like an LCD flat
Speaker 1: panel television, then the LCD would look brighter than the
Speaker 1: plasma display. You've got both showing the exact same video
Speaker 1: feed at the same time. Unless you've gone in and
Speaker 1: messed with settings to purposefully dim the LCD screen, it's
Speaker 1: going to be brighter than the plasma one. The plasma
Speaker 1: screens had incredible contrast ratios, but they didn't stand up
Speaker 1: to the brightness of LCDs, and so in store showrooms
Speaker 1: they weren't as bright and didn't attract as much attention.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about contrast ratios for a moment, because
Speaker 1: that is important. So this refers to the difference between
Speaker 1: the brightest colors that can be displayed on a screen
Speaker 1: and the darkest colors that can be displayed on that screen.
Speaker 1: So with an LCD display, you wouldn't get as wide
Speaker 1: a contrast ratio, meaning you didn't have as many degrees
Speaker 1: of differentiation between the darkest darks and the brightest brights,
Speaker 1: and that's because of a backlight. Plasma displays could either
Speaker 1: have pixels were on or off, and an off pixel
Speaker 1: would be almost pure black, not quite but close. So
Speaker 1: those pixels just wouldn't be active, so they'd be dark,
Speaker 1: but the pixel next door might be as bright as
Speaker 1: it possibly could be. So the contrast ratio on a
Speaker 1: plasma display is pretty remarkable typically, So in practice, this
Speaker 1: meant you could watch stuff like a movie in which
Speaker 1: a dark object is moving across a dark background and
Speaker 1: you'd still be able to make out what was going on.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I've watched horror
Speaker 1: movies on a television that uses a backlight, and I'm
Speaker 1: spending the whole time going what's happening. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if I should be scared right now because I
Speaker 1: can't see what's happening. So with a plasma display, if
Speaker 1: you're watching a movie like that or something like, you know,
Speaker 1: like one of the darker Batman films, it'd be great
Speaker 1: because you could actually see what was happening on screen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: with LCD displays, you have that backlight that's shining through
Speaker 1: the entire display all the time. The back lights just active.
Speaker 1: With the early LCD televisions. That is so LCDs are
Speaker 1: made up of You can think of them as a
Speaker 1: series of tiny little screens that have these liquid crystals
Speaker 1: in them, and those liquid crystals can either allow light
Speaker 1: to pass through or they can try to block that light.
Speaker 1: But even when the crystals are blocking light, there's still
Speaker 1: a little light that's bleeding through. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you have a window shade, like a thin window shade,
Speaker 1: and you pull it down and you're blocking light on
Speaker 1: a bright sunny day, but you can still see that
Speaker 1: there's light behind the shade because it's not thick enough
Speaker 1: to block all that light. It's the same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and that means if you're watching something that's set in
Speaker 1: a really dark location, then some of the light from
Speaker 1: the back light is still making its way through the
Speaker 1: crystals that are supposed to shield you from that light,
Speaker 1: and you end up with kind of more of a
Speaker 1: charcoal gray than a truly like pure black screen. So
Speaker 1: if you have a dark figure moving around across a
Speaker 1: dark background, you might not be able to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between the figure and the background at all. So
Speaker 1: movies like you know, Batman and those horror films and stuff,
Speaker 1: they might be really hard to follow. The plasma screen
Speaker 1: was perfect for representing the mini subtle shades, specifically of
Speaker 1: darker colors. It just couldn't reach the levels of brightness
Speaker 1: that you would get with alternative technologies. Now, there are
Speaker 1: tons of other advancements that we could talk about here,
Speaker 1: but they all get even more technical, and as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Weber does a phenomenal job outlining them all.
Speaker 1: So again I recommend you search for the article. It's
Speaker 1: titled History of the Plasma Display Panel by Weber web
Speaker 1: Er if you want to learn more about the technical
Speaker 1: hurdles that engineers had to clear in order to make
Speaker 1: plasma televisions a reality. Some of the issues get very
Speaker 1: persnickety and the solutions were really creative. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: episode would be like two hours long if I went
Speaker 1: into every single one of them, and they do get
Speaker 1: pretty pretty specific, So check out that are to learn more.
Speaker 1: Let's just get back to the high points of the
Speaker 1: history as a consumer technology. So by the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: things were getting to a point where a consumer plasma
Speaker 1: television was a possibility and Fujitsu would lead the way
Speaker 1: and people were impressed. When Fujitsu introduced this plasma TV,
Speaker 1: it was forty two inches on the diagonal, and it
Speaker 1: was much much much thinner than a CRT, even a
Speaker 1: CRT of a relatively small screen size like a twelve
Speaker 1: inch television. It had more depth than one of these
Speaker 1: plasma televisions did, so it took up way less space
Speaker 1: at least on a depth perspective, and forty two inches
Speaker 1: was really impressive. So remember CRTs had to be bulkier
Speaker 1: if you wanted a larger screen. And it also meant
Speaker 1: that the screen aspect ratio was different. It was now
Speaker 1: sixteen to nine instead of four to three. Again, that's
Speaker 1: for every nine units tall, it's sixteen units wide versus
Speaker 1: for every three units it's four units wide. That does
Speaker 1: make a difference. Like that's why again, if you watch
Speaker 1: old TV programming you get those bars on either side
Speaker 1: of the screen because the old televisions worked on a
Speaker 1: different aspect ratio than modern ones do. One thing that
Speaker 1: remained a problem for early plasma televisions was burn in,
Speaker 1: So this happened if a plasma TV screen was left
Speaker 1: displaying the same image for a really long time. This
Speaker 1: often would happen with folks who were video gamers. Right
Speaker 1: if you paused a game and walked off and you
Speaker 1: left the TV on and it stayed on that screen
Speaker 1: for a long time, you could get burn in. So
Speaker 1: what would happen is that the phosphors would heat up
Speaker 1: because they're being excited by this ultraviolet light. They're continuing
Speaker 1: to display images through luminescing, and as they would heat up,
Speaker 1: they would get damaged, and that would mean that you
Speaker 1: would get some degradation there. They'd lose their own so
Speaker 1: that the next time they're illuminated, they aren't as bright
Speaker 1: as they were before. And that meant if you started
Speaker 1: watching anything else the affected phosphors, the ones that were
Speaker 1: burnt out, they would appear to be a little dimmer
Speaker 1: than they were supposed to be, and it would be
Speaker 1: like you were looking at a shadow of that image
Speaker 1: that had been held on the screen for far too long.
Speaker 1: This was burn in, and it would end up being
Speaker 1: one of the drawbacks to early plasma televisions, and it
Speaker 1: also was a selling point for salespeople who are pushing
Speaker 1: LCD televisions over plasma televisions. Even later, plasma televisions still
Speaker 1: had to contend with burn in like that was an
Speaker 1: issue that remained a problem, although different manufacturers found ways
Speaker 1: to mitigate it to some extent so that it wasn't
Speaker 1: as likely, but it could still happen. It was never
Speaker 1: eliminated fully. Now, one advantage plasma televisions had over backlit
Speaker 1: TVs was that manufacturers could make them really big, like
Speaker 1: more than one hundred in on the diagonal big, if
Speaker 1: you really wanted to. However, it was hard to go
Speaker 1: the other way. It was hard to make smaller plasma televisions.
Speaker 1: Now you might say, well, that doesn't make sense. The
Speaker 1: very first plasma display was one inch by one inch.
Speaker 1: How much smaller are you going to get? When I
Speaker 1: say it was hard, I don't mean that it was
Speaker 1: technically hard. It was hard to make them so that
Speaker 1: you could sell them for a reasonable amount of money.
Speaker 1: Smaller televisions, those that were like thirty two inches or smaller.
Speaker 1: It was hard to produce plasma displays of that size
Speaker 1: and still have them make economic sense. You started to
Speaker 1: run up against an issue where customers wouldn't be willing
Speaker 1: to spend the money it would take in order to
Speaker 1: make a profit off of making these things, because it
Speaker 1: would feel like you're spending more money to get less
Speaker 1: real estate. However, if you did want to go bigger.
Speaker 1: Plasma was a really good choice in the early days,
Speaker 1: like plasma was cheaper on the larger end than LCD
Speaker 1: based televisions. But the battle was on between plasma and lcdtvs,
Speaker 1: and this got way more complicated in the mid two
Speaker 1: thousands upon the introduction of LED backlt televisions. So these
Speaker 1: were LCDs that used LEDs for that backlight. They were
Speaker 1: brighter than plasma screens, so you could use them in
Speaker 1: brightly lit rooms and that would not really be an issue.
Speaker 1: They didn't have as good an angle of view like
Speaker 1: with plasma TVs. You could be way off to one
Speaker 1: side or the other and still have a good view
Speaker 1: of what's happening on the screen, whereas with LEDs there
Speaker 1: was more of a limitation there. And they also had
Speaker 1: a lower contrast ratio than plasma screens. We mentioned that already. However,
Speaker 1: LED screens consumed way less power than plasma televisions did,
Speaker 1: so your electric bill would be lower if you're using
Speaker 1: an LED backlit LCD television rather than a plasma television.
Speaker 1: That brightness issue, though, I think that was the real killer,
Speaker 1: because if you were a consumer and you were shopping
Speaker 1: for televisions and you went to a retail store, you
Speaker 1: would see the difference right in front of you. Right.
Speaker 1: The plasma screens just weren't as bright as the LCD
Speaker 1: TVs with led backlight. Color representation with plasma was amazing,
Speaker 1: but that brightness issue caused a lot of people to balk.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of these stores just are under
Speaker 1: these bright fluorescent lights, and plasma TVs just didn't look
Speaker 1: as vibrant. There were some that would use like a
Speaker 1: darkened area to show off the televisions, and plasma televisions
Speaker 1: probably did a little better there, but generally, unless you
Speaker 1: were someone who was big into the in home theater setup,
Speaker 1: you probably weren't thinking in terms of I'm going to
Speaker 1: watch this in a darkened cave. You know, you might
Speaker 1: be watching it in a living room with lots of
Speaker 1: natural light and stuff, and you want to have a
Speaker 1: screen you can actually see. So the LCD television started
Speaker 1: to perform better in sales. Again. For gamers, the plasma
Speaker 1: televisions represented a dangerous investment. If you did put your
Speaker 1: game on pause so you could wolf down some pizza
Speaker 1: or whatever, you did so knowing that you might accidentally
Speaker 1: burn in an image of solid snake hiding in a
Speaker 1: cardboard box or something on your screen, and then you know,
Speaker 1: when it came time to watch Mean Girls or whatever,
Speaker 1: you'd have this shadow image of solid snake on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: when we're supposed to wear pink. It's a total bummer, dude.
Speaker 1: The LED backlighting alternative presented a real challenge because earlier
Speaker 1: LCD televisions were about the same thickness as plasma displays.
Speaker 1: They weren't that different, but the introduction of an LED
Speaker 1: backlight meant that manufacturers could make televisions even more slim
Speaker 1: than they already had been. So here you had even
Speaker 1: thinner screens that were more energy efficient and sometimes could
Speaker 1: provide even better resolution than plasma screens. The color representation
Speaker 1: on a plasma screen might be superior, but the actual
Speaker 1: picture quality and the brightness could be better on an
Speaker 1: LCD television with LED backlight. So plasma began to give
Speaker 1: way to these alternative technologies, much to the chagrin of
Speaker 1: devoted plasma TV fans. Now, for the manufacturers, this meant
Speaker 1: that plasma televisions were less marketable than LED TV, that
Speaker 1: you would make less money if you stuck with plasma
Speaker 1: than you would if you went with LED. So one
Speaker 1: by one, manufacturers began to pull the plug on plasma
Speaker 1: television production. Plus, once we got past twenty ten, we
Speaker 1: started seeing innovative work in O LEAD screens, organic LED displays,
Speaker 1: as well as the introduction of ultra high definition television.
Speaker 1: We're talking like four K TV at this point, and
Speaker 1: that was a real blow to plasma television because a
Speaker 1: lot more work was going to be needed to make
Speaker 1: plasma TVs capable of displaying UHD resolutions like they could
Speaker 1: do high resolution, but it would take even more innovation
Speaker 1: in the space to create a technology that would allow
Speaker 1: plasma to display four K resolution. With LED backlet displays,
Speaker 1: four K was a more achievable goal. There was less
Speaker 1: of an on ramp needed to achieve four K resolution
Speaker 1: with that technology, So that was another big blow against
Speaker 1: plasma and with that decline in interest in the market
Speaker 1: and this these hefty technical challenges that were in the way,
Speaker 1: companies opted to phase out plasma television in favor of
Speaker 1: LED and then OLED displays. The last major manufacturers making
Speaker 1: plasma screens got out of the game in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, so the last decade for the
Speaker 1: last decade, rather, plasma televisions have been kind of an
Speaker 1: abandoned technology now. Personally, I think plasma TV technology was incredible.
Speaker 1: I never owned a plasma television, that I always wanted
Speaker 1: one because the colors were so beautiful on those screens.
Speaker 1: And you know, I am of the opinion that once
Speaker 1: you reach a certain level of resolution, depending on how
Speaker 1: far away you are from viewing your television and how
Speaker 1: big the screen is, you get diminishing returns. Right Like
Speaker 1: the way I have my setup at home, I just
Speaker 1: have a regular HDTV. I don't even have a four
Speaker 1: K TV setup in my living room, and partly because
Speaker 1: of the size of the screen and how far away
Speaker 1: I am from it, I don't really notice. Like if
Speaker 1: I had swapped it out for a four K screen,
Speaker 1: I probably would be able to tell a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be dramatic. Right, So, for me, resolution
Speaker 1: was not necessarily the most important factor for a television. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: if I had one hundred and twenty inch screen and
Speaker 1: I was sitting like four feet away from it, I
Speaker 1: probably would need a very high resolution screen or out
Speaker 1: so I would start seeing the limitations. That's just not
Speaker 1: how I view TV, so it's not a big deal
Speaker 1: for me. For me, color representation is a more important
Speaker 1: part of it. So yeah, plasma TV really would appeal
Speaker 1: to me in that regard, But it's a moot point.
Speaker 1: It is a thing of the past. I think it
Speaker 1: still served to be an enormous leap over cathode ray
Speaker 1: tube technology, but ultimately alternatives to plasma were more practical
Speaker 1: and arguably more capable in the long run. Plasma TVs
Speaker 1: or plasma displays, I should say, are still used in
Speaker 1: various industries for different reasons, but when it comes to
Speaker 1: home televisions, it's officially a thing of the past. So
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this look back on plasma technology
Speaker 1: and how it worked in plasma televisions. Curious if any
Speaker 1: of y'all out there have a plasma TV that you
Speaker 1: still use. I know a lot of people like they
Speaker 1: upgrade their televisions fairly regularly. I'm one of those old
Speaker 1: dudes who just buys a TV and uses it till
Speaker 1: it don't work no more. So. My television is not
Speaker 1: a smart TV. It is not an Ultrahi definition television.
Speaker 1: It is hooked up to a smart TV device. So
Speaker 1: I do get those capabilities, and technically the device is
Speaker 1: capable of showing four K resolution. It's just my television
Speaker 1: can't do that, so it's kind of a lost feature
Speaker 1: for me. But yeah, maybe in a different past I
Speaker 1: would have been like one of those diehard plasma TV fans.
Speaker 1: I certainly saw the appeal of plasma television. I just
Speaker 1: never bought one. Anyway. That's it for this episode. I
Speaker 1: hope all of you out there are doing well, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.