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.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    24·
    7 hours ago

    Lighthouses.

    Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated, and more effective electronic navigational systems.

    They were quite important for a long time. We used them for thousands of years, and they’re often unique in form, iconic. And they’re a good subject for photos and paintings, and I think that the light effect from them is neat. Lots of books and such using them, like ones on remote rocks, to get an isolated setting (“the lone lighthouse keeper”).

    But the past few decades of technological advancement have probably closed the end of their era.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      5 hours ago

      Similarly, at airports they had these alternating white and blue lights that would sweep the sky for miles around. When we were on the road at night I used to know where we were based on that. I loved it.

    • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
      8·
      7 hours ago

      Narrator: and that is how the great solar storm of 2027 wiped out the entire naval shipping and logistics industry.