All did not begin as may seem to have ended up when the plasma display was first invented back in 1964 at the University of Illinois, the prototype combined large size and superb resolution that make today’s high-definition television possible with the addition of space-saving through the thinness of the screen, and it can even be hung upon the wall. Now it is merely about manufacturing the revolutionary display screens for a reasonable cost, and bringing this technological marvel into homes the world over, as even low end varieties of these screens can cost up to half of what it did even just two years ago.
The story begins not so commercially driven, however, as the creators of these types of displays had originally developed the idea as a means to make computer-based education a probability. After that initial idea had worked its’ way into being rejected by most, United States television companies were considering the plasma panels as some kind of alternative means to the cathode ray tube system, but those early considerations were dropped soon afterward. A few computer companies stuck with plasma displays until the advent of the liquid crystal display forced out those ideas, military contracts took up that slack that was left, but that meant that many of those students that worked on the project were forced to get other jobs to help them get by.
Meanwhile, various Japanese engineers were sent to these laboratories for researching the plasma displays capabilities, and eventually went back to a budding electronics industry that would someday soon dominate the manufacture and development of these plasma displays. One of the inventions that has revolutionized the system of education has been the automated teaching system of PLATO, which had proved its’ utility back in 1963, and it was understood that this system needed some way to become more universal for students other than the archaic framework that utilized it prior.
At first, this system incorporated specifically reworked televisions of the time, but these were not computers in the truest sense of the term. Soon enough, a better way to display the information and utilize its’ abilities would be on its’ way, and as a few of the students from the other laboratory were incorporated into this other research, the facts of the matter became obviously clear to each side of the progress. The breakthrough came when the two people most responsible for the invention realized what they needed to in order for it to work, and the next day they realized what became the first plasma display screen.