Introduction

Ever Wonder "How does that work?"

Have you ever looked at a device and wondered how it works? Lord knows that I have. I always did have the tinker gene. Even when I was just a kid, every time I would get a new game, or toy, I would open it up and poke around just because I was curious to see what was inside.

The problem with that curiosity of mine was that while I had the mechanical ability to pull things apart, I lacked the ability to put them back together in such a way that said device could ever function again. Needless to say, this annoyed the heck out of my parents since they were spending money to buy me things that I was just going to break at some point in the (usually near) future.

I would guess that quite a few of our readers were the same way back when they were kids too. Luckily, as we grow older, most of us learn to resist the urge to mess with the things that we KNOW will become non-functional should a screwdriver, and a bad idea, present themselves to us. We've learned that if we go any further past a cursory examination, the device is going to take a one-way train to hardware heaven.

Then there are others that go ahead and poke, prod, touch, pull and usually break everything and anything they can get their hands on, all in the pursuit of knowledge. I fit into the last category, but fortunately, as I got older, my ability to successfully reassemble and repair devices began to outpace my ability to take them apart. This made my parents VERY happy.

Terminology

INVAR Shadow Mask, Aperture Grills, electron guns. What the heck are these things? Today we are going to take a look at monitors. I'm sure most folks are familiar with the basic concept of how monitors (and televisions) work, and most have heard the terms "Vertical Sync, Refresh rate, Resolution, etc.", and while you may have a basic idea of what these terms refer to, those vague definitions cannot paint the mental picture needed to really understand the technology behind the flicker.

Monitors (and TVs) are extremely complicated, yet, are still amazingly resilient, flexible, and reliable devices. The whole reason these devices are so reliable is mostly due to the fact that monitors (and TVs again) consist of very few moving parts. Virtually everything in a monitor is electronically controlled, save the control switches and buttons of course. The absence of mechanical complexity greatly reduces the likelihood of failure.

Just as a quick note, computer monitors and televisions are of course, related technologies, and, as such, most of the discussion about one can be applied to the other. While we are going to focus mainly on computer monitors, you can pretty much apply all of this information to televisions too. There are of course, several very important differences between the two, and I will note these distinctions where needed.