A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display now commonly used for large TV displays (typically above 37-inch or 940 mm). Many tiny cells located between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases. The gas in the cells is electrically turned into a plasma which then excites phosphors to emit light. Plasma displays are commonly confused with LCDs, another lightweight flatscreen display but with very different technology.

History

The plasma video display was co-invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson for the PLATO Computer System. The original monochrome (orange, green, yellow) video display panels were very popular in the early 1970s because they were rugged and needed neither memory nor circuitry to refresh the images. A long period of sales decline occurred in the late 1970s as semiconductor memory made CRT displays cheaper than plasma displays. Fact: date=September 2008 Nonetheless, the plasma displays' relatively large screen size and thin body made them suitable for high-profile placement in lobbies and stock exchanges.

In 1983, IBM introduced a 19-inch (48 cm) orange-on-black monochrome display (model 3290 'information panel') which was able to show four simultaneous IBM 3270 virtual machine (VM) terminal sessions. That factory was transferred in 1987 to startup company Plasmaco, which Dr. Larry F. Weber, one of Dr. Bitzer's students, founded with Stephen Globus, as well as James Kehoe, who was the IBM plant manager.

In 1992, Fujitsu introduced the world's first 21-inch (53 cm) full-color display. It was a hybrid, based upon the plasma display created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NHK STRL, achieving superior brightness.

In 1996, Matsushita Electrical Industries (Panasonic) purchased Plasmaco, its color AC technology, and its American factory. In 1997, Fujitsu introduced the first 42-inch (107 cm) plasma display; it had 852x480 resolution and was progressively scanned. Also in 1997, Pioneer started selling the first plasma television to the public. Many current plasma televisions, thinner and of larger area than their predecessors, are in use. Their thin size allows them to compete with large area projection screens.

Screen sizes have increased since the introduction of plasma displays. The largest plasma video display in the world at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., North America was a 150-inch (381 cm) unit manufactured by Matsushita Electrical Industries (Panasonic) standing 6 ft (180 cm) tall by 11 ft (330 cm) wide and expected to initially retail at US$150,000.