The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC.
The standard IBM CGA graphics card was equipped with 16 kilobytes of video memory, and could be connected either to a NTSC-compatible monitor or television via an RCA connector for composite video, or to a dedicated 4-bit "RGBI" interface CRT monitor, such as the IBM 5153 color display.
Built around the Motorola MC6845 display controller, the CGA card featured several graphics and text modes. The highest display resolution of any mode was 640×200, and the highest color depth supported was 4-bit (16 colors).
Read more about Color Graphics Adapter: Color Palette, Standard Text Modes, Standard Graphics Modes, Further Graphics Modes and Tweaks, Special Effects On Composite Color Monitors, Bugs and Errata, Competing Adapters
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“The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera—and himself.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)