3 ms·

don’t really have resolution per se A CRT doesn't have to have resolution in the sense of pixels per inch (although many of them do). However "resolution" is

don’t really have resolution per se A CRT doesn't have to have resolution in the sense of pixels per inch (although many of them do). However "resolution" is a more general limit on how far away two distinct points can be. A discrete grid of pixels imposes one kind of limit. But another kind of limit is that two slightly fuzzy dots will become indistinguishable if they blur into one another sufficiently.

jchw 7y ago
Yeah, this was my understanding, but I kept it vague since I don’t claim to be any kind of expert. Otoh, I suspect for this reason that the choice of 80 columns particularly was not motivated by CRT limitations. Could be wrong but it’s not like CRT tech was new in the 70s, and we’re talking about monochrome here.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Most monitors were pretty small. So too many characters per horizontal real estate would have been hard to read.
  - gok 7y ago
    The core claim of this article is that this is not why 80 was picked though