Television Pictures and Color Addition

Color picture tubes have three electron beams and phosphors that emit red, green, and blue light. Mixtures of red, green, and blue light can make you per­ceive any color. A color television appears full color by carefully mixing these three colored lights. The inside surface of a color television screen is coated with thousands of tiny phosphor dots. Some of these dots emit red light, some green light, and some blue light.  The colors of a television picture depend upon the set of these three color phosphor dots. Each colored dot, in the set, is either on, off or dim.  You will notice all three colored dots can be seen, but the pattern of on, off and dim create the televisions picture.

The television directs electrons at these dots through holes in a metal mask. Three separate electron beams, coming from three slightly different angles, pass through the holes and strike the phosphors. Since each beam can only strike one color of phosphor dots, each beam con­trols the brightness of one of the three colors.

A picture is produced when many thousand of the dots are hit with the electron beams in a specific pattern. If one takes a picture from a TV monitor, see below, and magnifies it they would be able to observe the tiny dots that make up the picture.  The colors produced on the screen may be described by “Color Addition”

Last updated:  Friday, 26 December 2003 15:23:58