ABSTRACT
As the premiere imaging device of the 20th century, the cathode-ray tube (CRT) was used in both raster and vector monitors for radar, oscilloscopes, television, computer graphics displays, video games, home computers, surveillance monitors, medical imaging, and more. The technology involved in the CRT has come to define mediated imagery, and how we perceive it, becoming a part of the cultures it conveys. Today, as flat-screen technologies have so quickly begun to replace bulkier CRTs, the cathode-ray tube’s long-held role as the dominant moving image display has come to an end. To the general public, the CRT was a technology that was used passively as the receiver of television broadcasts; its interactive uses, present since the first oscilloscopes, took longer to gain public notice. Early arcade games used monochrome raster CRTs, although some vector-based games were produced from 1977 to 1985, and after 1980 virtually all games used color monitors.
