Plasma display

The plasma display emerged from an unlikely source: the need to teach computing to students who couldn't afford expensive CRT terminals. Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow at the University of Illinois were developing PLATO, a pioneering computer-assisted instruction system. CRT displays required constant refresh and couldn't scale. They needed something different.

In 1964, Bitzer and Slottow invented the plasma display panel by trapping ionized gas between two glass plates. When voltage was applied to specific cells, the gas glowed—each cell acting as a tiny fluorescent light. Unlike CRTs, plasma displays had inherent memory; once a cell was lit, it stayed lit until deliberately turned off. This eliminated the need for constant refresh and reduced the control electronics.

The adjacent possible required several converging elements: neon gas discharge physics understood from decades of neon sign manufacturing, precision glass manufacturing for flat panels, addressing electronics sophisticated enough to control thousands of cells, and applications that justified the development investment. PLATO's educational mission provided the driving use case that CRT displays couldn't satisfy.

Plasma displays found their initial commercial niche in specialized applications: stock exchanges needing large visible displays, airports showing flight information, industrial control rooms. The technology couldn't match CRT quality for general computing but excelled where size mattered more than resolution.

The transition to consumer electronics came decades later. Japanese manufacturers—Fujitsu, Panasonic, Pioneer—invested heavily in plasma technology for large-screen televisions in the 1990s. By 1997, the first 42-inch consumer plasma TVs appeared, enabling wall-mounted flat screens that CRTs couldn't match. For a decade, plasma dominated the large-screen TV market.

Geographic factors shaped the trajectory. The foundational invention occurred in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, where PLATO's educational computing mission justified the research. Japanese electronics giants scaled the technology for consumer production, with factories in Japan and eventually China producing panels. Korea's Samsung and LG entered the competition.

But plasma's reign was brief. LCD technology, initially suitable only for small screens, scaled to television sizes by the mid-2000s. LCDs consumed less power, ran cooler, and eventually achieved comparable picture quality at lower cost. OLED emerged as a premium alternative. By 2014, major manufacturers had exited plasma production entirely. The technology that enabled the first flat-screen TVs was extinct within two decades of reaching consumers—outcompeted by the very display technologies it had once seemed destined to replace.