The first engineering proposal for a flat-panel TV was by
General Electric in 1954 as a result of its work on radar monitors. The publication of their findings gave all the basics of future flat-panel TVs and monitors. But GE did not continue with the R&D required and never built a working flat panel at that time. The first production flat-panel display was the
Aiken tube, developed in the early 1950s and produced in limited numbers in 1958. This saw some use in military systems as a
heads up display and as an oscilloscope monitor, but conventional technologies overtook its development. Attempts to commercialize the system for home television use ran into continued problems and the system was never released commercially.
Dennis Gabor, better known as the inventor of
holography, patented a flat-screen CRT in 1958. This was substantially similar to Aiken's concept, and led to a years-long
patent battle. By the time the lawsuits were complete, with Aiken's patent applying in the US and Gabor's in the UK, the commercial aspects had long lapsed, and the two became friends. Around this time,
Clive Sinclair came across Gabor's work and began an ultimately unsuccessful decade-long effort to commercialize it. The
Philco Predicta featured a relatively flat (for its day) cathode-ray tube setup and would be the first commercially released "flat panel" upon its launch in 1958; the Predicta was a commercial failure. The
plasma display panel was invented in 1964 at the
University of Illinois, according to The History of Plasma Display Panels.
Liquid-crystal displays (LC displays, or LCDs) The
MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor) was invented by
Mohamed M. Atalla and
Dawon Kahng at
Bell Labs in 1959, and presented in 1960. Building on their work,
Paul K. Weimer at
RCA developed the
thin-film transistor (TFT) in 1962. It was a type of MOSFET distinct from the standard bulk MOSFET. The idea of a TFT-based LCD was conceived by
Bernard J. Lechner of
RCA Laboratories in 1968. B.J. Lechner, F.J. Marlowe, E.O. Nester and J. Tults demonstrated the concept in 1968 with a
dynamic scattering LCD that used standard discrete MOSFETs. The first
active-matrix addressed
electroluminescent display was made using TFTs by
T. Peter Brody's Thin-Film Devices department at
Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1968. In 1973, Brody, J. A. Asars and G. D. Dixon at
Westinghouse Research Laboratories demonstrated the first
thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display. Brody and Fang-Chen Luo demonstrated the first flat
active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) using TFTs in 1974. The 2.1-inch
Epson ET-10
Epson Elf was the first color LCD pocket TV, released in 1984. In 1988, a
Sharp research team led by engineer T. Nagayasu demonstrated a 14-inch full-color LCD, which convinced the
electronics industry that LCD would eventually replace CRTs as the standard television
display technology.
LED displays The first usable LED display was developed by
Hewlett-Packard (HP) and introduced in 1968. It was the result of
research and development (R&D) on practical
LED technology between 1962 and 1968, by a research team under Howard C. Borden, Gerald P. Pighini, and
Mohamed M. Atalla, at HP Associates and
HP Labs. In February 1969, they introduced the HP Model 5082-7000 Numeric Indicator. It was the first alphanumeric LED display, and was a revolution in
digital display technology, replacing the
Nixie tube for numeric displays and becoming the basis for later LED displays. In 1977, James P Mitchell prototyped and later demonstrated what was perhaps the earliest monochromatic flat-panel LED television display.
Ching W. Tang and
Steven Van Slyke at
Eastman Kodak built the first practical
organic LED (OLED) device in 1987. In 2003,
Hynix produced an organic EL driver capable of lighting in 4,096 colors. In 2004, the
Sony Qualia 005 was the first
LED-backlit LCD. The
Sony XEL-1, released in 2007, was the first OLED television. ==Common types==