The monochrome plasma video displays was co-invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Wilson. The original neon orange monochrome Digivue display panels built by glass producer by Owens-Illinois were very popular in the early 1970's because they were rugged and needed neither memory nor circuit try to refresh the images.
Plasma displays are bright, have a wide color gamut, and be produced in fairly large sizes - up to 3.8 meters diagonally. They have a very low-luminance "darkroom" black level compared to the lighter gray of the unilluminated parts of an LCD screen. LCD televisions have been developed to reduce this distinction. The display panel itself is about 6 cm, generally allowing the device's total thickness to be less than 10 cm. Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT or an AMLCD television.
Plasma screens have been lagging behind CRT and LCD screens in terms of energy consumption efficiency. To reduce the energy consumption, new technologies are also being found. Although it the future, a growing problem is that people tend to keep their old TVs running and an increasing trend to escalating screen size.
