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Zero-power displays The Plasma display panel was invented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Donald L. Bitzer and H. Gene Slottow in 1964 for the PLATO Computer System. The original monochrome (usually orange or green) panels enjoyed a surge of popularity in the early 1970s because the displays were rugged and needed neither memory nor refresh circuitry. There followed a long period of sales decline in the late 1970s as semiconductor memory made CRT displays incredibly cheap. Nonetheless, plasma's relatively large screen size and thin profile made the displays attractive for high-profile placement such as lobbies and stock exchanges. In 1983, IBM introduced a 19" orange on black monochrome display (model 3290 'information panel') which was able to show four simultaneous 3270 virtual machine (VM) terminal sessions. In 1992, Fujitsu introduced the world's first 21-inch full color display. It was a hybrid based on the plasma display created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NHK STRL, achieving superior brightness. Small monochrome displays such as those found in personal organizers, or older laptop screens have a passive-matrix structure employing supertwist nematic (STN) or double-layer STN (DSTN) technology (DSTN corrects a color-shifting problem with STN). Each row or column of the display has a single electrical circuit. The pixels are addressed one at a time by row and column addresses. This type of display is called a passive matrix because the pixel must retain its state between refreshes without the benefit of a steady electrical charge. As the number of pixels (and, correspondingly, columns and rows) increases, this type of display becomes increasingly less feasible. Very slow response times and poor contrast are typical of passive-matrix LCDs. Reflective LCDs, often found in digital watches and calculators, are illuminated by external light reflected by a (sometimes) diffusing reflector behind the display. This type of LCD can produce darker 'blacks' than the transmissive type since light must pass through the liquid crystal layer twice and thus is attenuated twice, however because the reflected light is also attenuated twice in the translucent parts of the display image contrast is usually poorer than a transmissive display. The absence of a lamp significantly reduces power consumption, allowing for longer battery life in battery-powered devices; small reflective LCDs consume so little power that they can rely on a photovoltaic cell, as often found in pocket calculators. IPS (In-Plane Switching) was developed by Hitachi in 1996 to improve on the poor viewing angles and color reproduction of TN panels. These improvements came at a loss of response time, which was initially on the order of 50ms. IPS panels were also extremely expensive.
The zenithal bistable device (ZBD), developed by QinetiQ (formerly DERA), can retain an image without power. The crystals may exist in one of two stable orientations (Black and "White") and power is only required to change the image. ZBD Displays is a spin-off company from QinetiQ who manufacture both grayscale and colour ZBD devices. Plasma displays are bright (1000 lx or higher for the module), have a wide color gamut, and can be produced in fairly large sizes, up to 260 cm (102 inches) diagonally. They have a very high "dark-room" contrast, creating the "perfect black" desirable for watching movies. The display panel is only 6 cm (2 1/2 inches) thick, while the total thickness, including electronics, is less than 10 cm (4 inches). Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT or an AMLCD television; in 2004 the cost has come down to US$1900 or less for the popular 42 inch (107 cm) diagonal size, making it very attractive for home-theatre use. Real life measurements of plasma power consumption find it to be much less than that normally quoted by manufacturers. Nominal measuments indicate 150 Watts for a 50" screen. The lifetime of the latest generation of PDPs is estimated at 60,000 hours to half life when displaying video. Half life is the point where the picture has degraded to half of its original brightness, which is considered the end of the functional life of the display. So if you use it at an average of 2-1/2 hours a day, the PDP will last approximately 65 years. Twisted Nematic (TN) (Patterned Vertical Alignment) is a more advanced version of MVA technology offered by Samsung. Developed independently, it suffers from the same problems as MVA, but boasts the best contrast ratios of any TFT technology. LCD technology still has a few drawbacks in comparison to some other display technologies:
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1963: The first major English language publication on the subject "Molecular Structure and Properties of Liquid Crystals", by Dr. George W. Gray. Some LCD panels have defective transistors, causing permanently lit or unlit pixels. Unlike integrated circuits, LCD panels with a few defective pixels are usually still usable. It is also economically prohibitive to discard a panel with just a few bad pixels because LCD panels are much larger than ICs. Manufacturers have different standards for determining a maximum acceptable number of defective pixels. The following table presents the maximum acceptable number of defective pixels for IBM's ThinkPad laptop line.
TFT LCDs are a variant of liquid crystal display which use thin-film transistor technology to improve their image quality. TFT LCDs are one type of active matrix LCD, though this is usually synonymous with them. They are used in both flat panel displays and projectors. In computing, TFT monitors are rapidly displacing competing CRT technology, and are commonly available in sizes from 30 to 77 cm (~12 to 30 inches). As of 2005, they have also made inroads on the television market.