Ask Lemmy

27258 readers

1646 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

candyman337@lemmy.world

TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee

TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

Asudox@lemmy.world

can@lemmy.ca

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

asudox@discuss.tchncs.de

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

453

What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations? (pawb.social)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by VinesNFluff@pawb.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

482 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Disregarding the safety comments (which should not be disregarded) purely for the purposes of this conversation, in older cars the vacuum tubes that operated the lights would frequently fail, meaning that the lights wouldn't deploy even when desired.

[–] toddestan@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That was revised in slightly newer cars, where the vacuum lines from the engine were required to hold the headlights closed. So when the mechanism inevitably failed, you had permanently deployed headlights until/if it was repaired.

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Huh, never knew. My sole exposure to this was one quite classic car. Thanks for the information!