What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations?

Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 448 points –

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

476

You are viewing a single comment

Tom Scott does a youtube video about one in Canada (IIRC) where they send radioactive medicine from the lab a down the road to a hospital due to the half life of the medication making traditional transport (ie vehicles) impractical.

Edit: bothered to look it up

I know of a hospital where the local university sends tracers with F-18 for PET scans in much the same way. Half-life of 110 minutes.