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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Mega-Monitor
Message-ID: <2528@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 27-Jul-87 02:40:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2528
Posted: Mon Jul 27 02:40:51 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jul-87 01:02:47 EDT
References: <165@asci.UUCP> <102300005@datacube> <4801@columbia.UUCP> <2488@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 37

In article <23912@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
>    A somewhat more practical approach would be to use lasers rather
>than crts. Modulate a laser in much the same way as a crt and use three
>of them to scan the screen (R, G, B). In either case you are talking
>big bucks here.

farren@hoptoad.uucp (Mike Farren) wrote:
> The electroptics whizzes at Zenith tried this, using Bragg cells as 
> modulators/deflectors, and three tuned lasers for the colors.  Unviewable.

Funny, some folks at A. D. 2000 in Santa Clara did this and it worked
just fine.  They used three lasers, acousto-optical modulators,
traditional galvanometers for the vertical deflection, and a spinning
manysided mirror in vacuum at some phenomenal rotation (30,000 RPM?)
for the horizontal scan.  The result was a bright movie screen sized
picture from any NTSC video source.  We hooked it up to a modified
Sun-1 color board, and saw images from 'live' TV as well as from
videodisks.  It took a special screen, but nothing unavailable, just
more expensive.  They had exactly one prototype, which worked well but
was not portable.  They claimed that it could be modified to handle up
to 1000x1000 by splitting the beams, adding more modulators, and
painting N horizontal scan lines in one horizontal scan.  Increasing
the horizontal scan rate would be hard, but increasing the number of
horiz pixels was easy, since they weren't at the edge of modulator
technology, and increasing the # of vertical pixels could be done by
painting more than one line at a time.  This is a far cry from 13Kx13K
but it's a start.

The company had financial troubles because the genius engineer who made
all this work somehow got linked up with somebody I wouldn't trust, as
his "company president".  The president owned like 50% of the stock,
the engineer 25%.  I considered investing years ago but wouldn't put money
near the president.  I keep meaning to call the engineer and see what he
is doing these days...
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