Pixels Replace Vector Displays
The density, capacity, and price of computer memory have improved steadily and exponentially for decades, an engineering trend called Moore's Law. The limitations of refreshed or storage vector displays were accepted only in the era when those displays were much cheaper than raster-scan alternatives. Raster graphic displays inevitably took over when the price of 128 kilobytes no longer mattered.
Imlac PDS-1's at Xerox PARC impressed them with its interactivity and graphics. But its ugly text prompted Chuck Thacker to develop the experimental bitmapped Xerox Alto machine in 1973, a decade before that much memory was affordable for non-research single-user machines. And Alto led to the GUI revolution.
The PDS-1 and similar vector terminals were supplanted in the 1980s by (non-programmable) raster graphics terminals such as the AED767. And by easily programmed personal workstations with raster graphics such as the Terak 8510/a UCSD Pascal machine and the high performance PERQ Unix system. And those were supplanted by microprocessor-based mass-market Macintoshes, Windows PCs, and video game consoles. And now by single chips inside smartphones.
Read more about this topic: Imlac PDS-1
Famous quotes containing the words replace and/or displays:
“Skilled workers historically have been ambivalent toward automation, knowing that the bodies it would augment or replace were the occasion for both their pain and their power.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The emancipation of today displays itself mainly in cigarettes and shorts. There is even a reaction from the ideal of an intellectual and emancipated womanhood, for which the pioneers toiled and suffered, to be seen in painted lips and nails, and the return of trailing skirts and other absurdities of dress which betoken the slave-woman’s intelligent companionship.”
—Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960)