The Plasma TV Blog

It was in July of 1964 at the University of Illinois, that the first prototype for a plasma display monitor was invented by Professors Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow, as well as Robert Willson, who was still a graduate student at the time. This early monitor was developed with the idea of replacing cathode ray tubes in computer monitors because of the problems computer monitors had with refreshing rates in the display of computer graphics. The prototype display panel consisted of a single plasma cell. (The current models of plasma televisions have millions of cells.) Although still very primitive, the possibilities of plasma development as an alterative to CRT technology in television were being considered, but the advent of LCD put plasma in a holding pattern. LCD was widely used in computer monitors and then began to take the lead in the introduction of flat screen televisions.

In the next two decades the plasma display monitor enjoyed a short period of popularity. The original monochrome panels that came in mostly orange and green, with an occasional yellow screen, were in demand briefly due to the fact that they were very rugged and did not need memory or circuitry to refresh images as the CRT models did. However, with the introduction of semiconductor memory, CRT displays became much cheaper than the plasma displays. It was only the fact that plasmas could match a rather large screen to a thin profile that made them useful for limited applications, such as large screens in lobbies and the stock exchange.

Although the technology was not in the public’s eye during the 80’s, progress was being made. Such giants as IBM were interested in the technology. James Kehoe, an IBM plant manager, and Larry Weber, one of the students of Dr.Bitzer, who was involved with the original prototype, started a development company called Plasmaco. Other electronics giants were looking at the plasma process, however. In 1992, 28 years after that single celled prototype was born in an Illinois laboratory, Fujitsu introduced a 21 inch full color display monitor. The first plasma televisions were sold to the public by Pioneer in 1997. Ever since then, the screen size have been increasing. In 2006 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Panasonic unveiled a 103 inch screen model.

Dr. Larry F. Weber, the Illinois student involved in Plasmaco, once said that plasma technology was a “solution waiting for a problem.” The advent of High Definition Television signals, how to bring those signals into the home, and how to display them on ever larger screens with ever increasing image quality was just the problem plasma was waiting to solve.

Link to Part 2 of this article. Plasma History Part 2