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How did Engelbart render black text on a white background during his 1968 Demo, considering that the display technology at the time was based on vector CRTs, wh

How did Engelbart render black text on a white background during his 1968 Demo, considering that the display technology at the time was based on vector CRTs, which typically produced glowing light rather than dark areas?

kens 2y ago
Output was displayed on 5" CRTs. High-resolution TV cameras (875-line) transmitted the CRT output to 17" monitors at each work station. By flipping a switch, the video could be inverted, so you could get either black lines on a light background or white lines on a black background. In other words, Engelbart invented dark mode :-)
- xkriva11 2y ago
  Crazy. This clearly demonstrates their focus on output, even at the expense of cost-effectiveness. Was TREE-META directly linked to META-II?
  - kens 2y ago
    As far as I can tell, TREE-META and META II were unrelated compiler compilers.
    - kragen 2y ago
      I vaguely remember the published description of TREE-META crediting META-II, though I might be confabulating that. More broadly, I don't think any compiler-compiler is unrelated to META-II.
- kragen 2y ago
  Plausibly someone else in Engelbart's lab, or a group of people, invented it. He always complained about people assigning him credit for the whole team's output.