![]() ![]() Ultimately CRT’s use as memory storage was a temporary trend that was quickly innovated past. Just think of it this way-bit for bit, Selectron-based computer memory is the most expensive type of RAM you can buy on eBay. One problem: While a better vacuum tube, it was nowhere near as reliable or capable as magnetic core memory, which came out around the same period as the Selectron Tube, and made the idea of storing memory using a CRT obsolete. Zworykin, who developed the tube-based system for distributing television as well as a tube-based system for television cameras to use to properly record material for the format, was the very type of person you wanted developing CRT-based memory, and he definitely pulled through for this one. Zworykin, the tube improved on the work of Williams and Kliburn and used different, more reliable methods of data storage. Developed with the help of Russian innovator and early television pioneer Vladimir K. Perhaps the most interesting was the Selectron Tube, a vacuum tube and compact CRT that could hold up to 4,096 bits (512 bytes) at the high end. The Williams-Kilburn Tube wasn’t alone on this front-RCA had developed a number of competing products (including the Radechon tube, above). (Let it be said that degaussing would not be a good idea with a Williams tube.) Williams tubes, despite their wide use, were notoriously unreliable, requiring constant tuning, and were often combined with other types of memory, such as magnetic drums, to allow for multiple, more-reliable memory options. But even so it worked, if only for a short amount of time. To be clear, we’re not talking about a ton of data-at the high end, a single tube could hold 2,048 bits, or 256 bytes of data. Essentially, it leverages the fact that electrons will stick to the phosphor of the screen for a short amount of time, allowing data to be stored for a brief period of time as long as the electrons are occasionally refreshed to store the information. Notably, the way that these tubes worked to store information leveraged features of CRTs that would have been undesirable if you were a television viewer. This tube ended up being used by a number of important early computers, most notably the UNIVAC, as a way to store information. Williams and Tom Kilburn, researchers at the British Telecommunications Research Establishment who used the properties of the CRT to store random-access data on a CRT-based monitor, a solution called the Williams-Kilburn Tube. Perhaps the most notable example of this was developed by Fredrick C. ![]() The CRT had a similar arc of having value in a lot of areas, including in the management and storage of memory. CRT as RAM: How early optical cathode ray tubes found use as primitive forms of computer memoryĪs we’ve written in the past, vacuum tubes had an important role in the history of computing, even if that role has evolved somewhat in the modern day. ![]()
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