Computer monitors

When the first computers appeared they had monitors which had a cathode ray tube (normally referred to as a CRT). The CRT technology was developed to allow very large displays and also to display high quality images.

One drawback was the cost of the arger or better monitors. Another was the amount of desk space needed for a CRT monitor!

Then laptops appeared with their flat LCD screens built into the lid of the computer, and technology advances rapidly produced large, flat LCD monitors for the desktop computers.

The quality of a monitor display is referred to as the resolution of the display. A pixel is the smallest block of colour displayed on the monitor. A monitor which displays 800x600 is actually display 800 pixels x 600 pixels. All the displayed image consists of these pixels of colour.

Aspect ratio

The aspect ratio is the width of the display screen to the height of the display screen. The aspect ratio together with the screen resolution defines how many pixels are available on the image being displayed on the screen.

Standard monitor resolutions in pixels

Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) - 1024 x 768 pixels

Super eXtended Graphics Array (SXGA) - 1280 x 1024 pixels

Ultra eXtended Graphics Array (UXGA) - 1600 x 1200 pixels

Quad eXtended Graphics Array (QXGA) - 2048 x 1536 pixels

Wide XGA (WXGA) - 1280 x 800 pixels

Widescreen Ultra eXtended Graphics Array (WUXGA) with a display resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels which is 2,304,000 pixels at a screen aspect ratio of 16:10.

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