A liquid crystal display (LCD) is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly.
LCDs are available to display arbitrary images (as in a general-purpose computer display) or fixed images which can be displayed or hidden, such as preset words, digits, and 7-segment displays as in a digital clock. They use the same basic technology, except that arbitrary images are made up of a large number of small pixels, while other displays have larger elements.
LCDs are used in a wide range of applications including computer monitors, televisions, instrument panels, aircraft cockpit displays, and signage. They are common in consumer devices such as video players, gaming devices, clocks, watches, calculators, and telephones, and have replaced cathode ray tube (CRT) displays in most applications. They are available in a wider range of screen sizes than CRT and plasma displays, and since they do not use phosphors, they do not suffer image burn-in. LCDs are, however, susceptible to image persistence.
The LCD screen is more energy efficient and can be disposed of more safely than a CRT. Its low electrical power consumption enables it to be used in battery-powered electronic equipment. It is an electronically modulated optical device made up of any number of segments filled with liquid crystals and arrayed in front of a light source (backlight) or reflector to produce images in color or monochrome. Liquid crystals were first developed in 1888. By 2008, worldwide sales of televisions with LCD screens exceeded annual sales of CRT units; the CRT became obsolete for most purposes.
Read more about Liquid Crystal Display: Overview, History, Illumination, Connection To Other Circuits, Passive and Active-matrix, Quality Control, Zero-power (bistable) Displays, Specifications, Military Use of LCD Monitors, Advantages and Disadvantages
Famous quotes containing the words liquid, crystal and/or display:
““Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven’s last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us: we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colors, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.””
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“Lovers of painting and lovers of music are people who openly display their preference like a delectable ailment that isolates them and makes them proud.”
—Maurice Blanchot (b. 1907)