BRAD: The Brookhaven Raster Display

A multiconsole computer display system has
been designed that provides very rich displays at 
low unit cost.  Each BRAD (Brookhaven Raster Display)
console can plot tens of thousands of points, or 
up to 4000 characters at 30 frames per second.  After
an initial display system investment of $50,000 
each display, with teletype, costs less than $3,000.
 The technique employed is that of programmatically 
generating a binary image of the desired display in a
computer.  The image is written on a rotating drum 
memory.  Independent read heads continuously display
the picture, which is generated by swept horizontal 
lines.  A standard TV monitor serves as the display device.
 The technique has two drawbacks.  A computer 
must compute any image to be displayed.  Also, the "pointing"
interaction is more difficult.  This is 
because the pointing function gives only the coordinates
of the point on the screen.  The inverse of 
the map generation process is required to calculate
the coordinates of the point on the screen.  The 
inverse of the map generation process is required to
calculate the coordinates at the selected point 
in the input space.

CACM June, 1968

Ophir, D.
Rankowitz, S.
Shepherd, B. J.
Spinrad, R. J.

computer display, computer graphics, computer raster
display, TV display console, digital TV display, 
swept raster computer display, swept raster TV computer
display, TV graphics terminal, multiconsole computer 
graphics, inexpensive graphic terminal

2.0 4.49 6.35

CA680604 JB February 22, 1978  4:35 PM

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