I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
    2·
    9 months ago

    Pneumatic tubes were way, way cooler than email.

    Of course, you could only use them to send a message to someone in the same office building, so the comparison isn’t perfect… but you know what I mean.

    • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
      2·
      9 months ago

      I’m not crazy old, but I’m old enough that the supermarket I went to as a kid had these at all the checkout aisles and the cashiers would use them to send cheques/reciepts/ whatever.

      It was awesome to see.

    • tnarg42@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      Big hospitals still have them to send medications and random lightweight stuff around the complex. My wife has worked in two large hospitals that had pretty extensive tube systems, used especially with pharmacy.