Monitors

"Its easy to explain what a monitor is. Its the thing you are using now to read this. Monitors, much like everything else relating to computers, have gone through their own stages of evolution even if they weren't as extreme as the evolution steps of the graphics cards that feed the images to the monitor. The first monitors had specific capabilities, like being suited for showing characters for an electronic typewriter or showing a beam for use in an oscilloscope. Nowadays though, monitors can show whatever you want, with their capabilities instead being limited by your budget and what you need them for instead of technology. For example if you need a touch monitor, or a 3D monitor, or a rugged monitor for use in harsh environment. Early monitors used a technology called CRT, that basically it was an electron gun throwing electrons on a surface covered with phosphor that reacted to the electrons hitting it and glowing a color from the 3 basic ones: red, green or blue. Mixing the intensity of the 3 made different colors. Today's monitors use mostly LCD technology instead of CRT, but the main idea is the same. Light up the 3 colors to make more colors. LCD is different in the sense that its smaller and lighter. A single pixel on the LCD panel is divided into 3 subpixels, the red green and blue elements. And because there is a fixed number of pixels in an LCD panel, it is said that LCDs have a native resolution and things look nice and crisp when using that resolution instead of a lower one. (CRT monitors had a max resolution and a resolution that was optimized for them, but in general were good in lots of resolutions). With companies like LG, Iiyama, Phillips, Samsung, NEC; there is something for everybody."

– Master