Vector monitor

A vector is a screen based on the cathode ray tube screen type, the image is not in rows and columns based as opposed to television, but as an oscilloscope records directly with the cathode ray points and lines on the fluorescent screen. More complicated characters like letters are composed of individual line segments. Vector monitors are designed in the 1960s and were still in use until the mid- 1980s.

Operation

Typical vector graphics systems consist of a main processor with the associated processor screen (display processor), a display buffer (display buffer) and a CRT. The display buffer stores a list of drawing commands with (x, y ) - or ( x, y, z ) endpoint coordinates and commands for text output. These commands are interpreted by the display processor and the vector generator (vector generator ) is converted into electric voltage, which ultimately control the position of the electron beam.

Since the luminance of the phosphor decreases after excitation by the electron beam in, or at most a few tens of hundreds of microseconds, the display processor must go through the display buffer repeatedly in order to refresh the newly phosphor. This had to happen at least 30 times per second to avoid flicker. In the 1960s there were very few and very expensive devices that were capable of doing. In addition, it could be viewed only flicker up to several thousand lines.

In the late 1960s, so-called Direct -View Storage Tubes ( DVSTs ) came on the market, who wrote the screen once in a memory array. It allows the display buffer was invalid; the display was always flicker. With the considerably cheaper DVSTs interactive computer graphics for many companies became affordable.