Next year, the pixel will turn fifty years old. "Pixel" is a term meaning "picture element," basically a fancy word for "dot." The pixel is connected directly by a piece of memory inside a computer. An array of memory represents a grid of dots, making it possible to display images on a computer screen. It's a simple idea, but given enough resolution, you can use it to represent any image you can see.
In 1954, at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies, a small matrix of glowing vacuum tubes was used to spell out letters in the first-ever instance of computer memory being mapped directly to dots in a display. Later came early personal computers with "high-resolution" (hah!) 300 x 200 screens. Memory and processing resources were at such a premium in these machines that they had a separate "text mode" that used dedicated hardware to generate text, a vestigal feature that still endures in Intel-based computers. In 1984 -- the thirtieth year of the pixel -- came the Macintosh, the first personal computer that didn't have a text mode but rather treated on-screen text as just another graphic.
Twenty years after that, pixels are everywhere. Even our entertainment is broken down into pixels, compressed, and disseminated digitally via satellite, cable, DVD, and the Internet. This simple idea has touched all of our lives in unimaginable ways. All glory to the pixel!
(Found at Boing Boing)
I found this very interesting. I enoy learning where things got started.
A hyper-nerdy quibble: One could argue that moving theater marquees, and similar reader-boards with incandescent lights, were an earlier use of the pixel idea. Of course the memory in that case was strictly mechanical: a set of movable pegs something like a music box drum.
Interesting idea, ockham. If you follow that analogy, a digital projection movie is the union of mechanical and electronic pixel implementations. Old meets new.
Alls I know is...Jersey ain't a joke no more!
frank,
Sure it is.
Some things will never change. :)
Yeah, but what other state can say they invented the Internet? Looks like NJ beat CA by decades.
Hey. No pixel, no Internet. No contest.
Well, there certainly wouldn't be a Web as we know it today, but the Internet could get by just fine without pixels.