Clarity
Pixel for pixel, monochrome monitors produce sharper text and images than color CRT monitors. This is because each pixel on a monochrome monitor is made up of one phosphor dot, located in the center of the pixel; whereas on a color monitor, each pixel is made up of three phosphor dots (one red, one blue, one green), none of which are in the center of the pixel. Monochrome monitors were used in almost all dumb terminals and are still widely used in text-based applications such as computerized cash registers and point of sale systems because of their superior sharpness and enhanced readability.
Some green screen displays were furnished with a particularly full/intense phosphor coating, making the characters very clear and sharply defined (thus easy to read), but generating a somewhat disturbing afterglow-effect (sometimes called a "ghost image") when the text scrolled down the screen or when a screenful of information was quickly replaced with another as in word processing page up/down operations. Other green screens avoided the heavy afterglow-effects, but at the cost of much more pixelated character images. The 5151, amongst others, had brightness and contrast controls to allow the user to set their own compromise.
The ghosting effects of the now-obsolete green screens have become an eye-catching visual shorthand for computer-generated text, frequently (and ironically) in "futuristic" settings. The opening titles of the first Ghost in the Shell film and the Matrix source code of the Matrix trilogy science fiction films prominently feature computer displays with ghosting green text. The XScreenSaver package of screen savers by Jamie Zawinski also includes a screen saver called Phosphor that prints green text with a simulated ghosting effect. Green text is also featured in the Swan's computer in Lost series.
Read more about this topic: Monochrome Monitor
Famous quotes containing the word clarity:
“If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master- piece is not.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)