Only one pixel is activated at a time on a CRT television, even when you watch an entire screen of video.

Cathode-ray tube televisions were once one of the most common particle accelerators, producing images by firing electrons at screens.

Analog television broadcasts were encoded at different frame rates worldwide to align with the frequency of alternating current in the region's electrical grids.

LCD displays use the same principle as polarizing sunglasses, which act as filters that block light waves traveling with specific orientations.

A 14-year-old Idaho farmer conceived the system behind electronic televisions, inspired by the plowing lines on his family's potato farm.

The frame rate of US analog television signals was reduced from 30 to 29.97 to ensure color broadcasts were still compatible with black-and-white televisions.

Learn about the terminology used to describe television brightness, color, and gamma—a measure of how the display transitions from pure black to pure white.

Watch a 3D-printed mechanical television modeled after the Nipkow disk—a device patented in 1884 that could scan and display images using a spinning disk.

The first television image transmission was displayed to the public in 1926 and used a mechanical television consisting of rotating disks.

Liquid crystals were accidentally discovered while studying carrot cholesterols in 1888—decades before they served as the foundation of various display technologies.

Cathode rays are beams of electrons that emit light when hitting a fluorescent screen

Unlike LCDs, OLEDs do not have a backlight behind every pixel, enabling them to deliver theoretically infinite contrast and deeper blacks.

This mind-bending optical illusion creates motion-induced blindness—stare at the middle dot and the others disappear.

Watch the motion of an individual photon using a high-speed camera

Leftover radiation from the Big Bang accounts for about 1% of the static in analog television signals.

Forward-moving wheels can appear to spin backward because the brain fills in gaps between still camera frames under certain conditions.

See how computer memory really works—from binary bits to modern RAM

With a core consisting of a glass fiber roughly the width of human hair, fiber-optic cables transmit digital information via flashes of light that reflect within the glass.

While charges consistently move in the same direction in a direct current, the flow of charges changes multiple times per second in an alternating current.

Each pixel in a micro-LED display gets its color from electrifying inorganic materials, which are more durable and resilient than the organic materials in OLEDs.

Particle accelerators propel matter toward small targets at high speed

HDR, or High Dynamic Range, increases image detail by expanding the range of the darkest black and the brightest white and the steps between them.

The term 'television' comes from the Greek and Latin terms for 'seeing at a distance' and was coined at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris.

Watch lightning strike a building at 40,000 frames per second

Holograms are produced by shining light through recordings of interference patterns

Time crystals are systems of atoms organized into periodic patterns of motion

Convert anything you draw into a system of epicycles to visualize the discrete Fourier transform.

Particle detection has evolved from cloud and bubble chambers to digital 3D displays

Where did artful screen savers go? A history

Particles moving faster than the speed of light give nuclear reactors an eerie blue glow.

Cyclotrons move particles in spiral paths of increasing radius

You manipulate an electric field whenever you use most touch screens, and software analyzes changes to the field to identify where you tapped.

Sharp wave ripples in the brain tag experiences for long-term memory storage

Electrical energy transfers at near light speed, even though the electrons carrying the energy in circuits only move a fraction of a millimeter per second.

Scientists create movies of subatomic phenomena using X-ray free-electron lasers, in which images are produced by striking matter with high-intensity light created by accelerating electrons.

Mechanical watches measure the passage of time via the vibration of a quartz crystal

Scientists have recorded neural rhythms as mice perform actions and observed those same rhythms replaying during sleep—witnessing loops that support memory formation and provide insights for brain-computer interfaces.

Rather than measuring the rising and falling of the sun or pendulum swings, optical clocks track the passage of time using the vibrations of atoms.

Classic movies are prone to decomposition because they're captured on nitrate film

Laser disc technology stores binary data in etched pits and lands

The science of optical illusions

See a timeline of the consolidation of the television and film industry, beginning with Vaudeville theatre traditions from the 1880s.

Watch a video that visualizes what really happens inside a credit card network when you make a purchase.

CES debuted in 1967 amid a wave of miniaturization in at-home electronics

Explaining pulsars, the cosmic clocks and lighthouses of the universe

Watch a tech demo of the world's first consumer graphics processing unit, the Nvidia GeForce 256, released Oct. 11, 1999.

Vision experts generally don't recommend blue-light-blocking glasses because there's no scientific evidence that the light from computer screens damages eyes.

Graphic processing units rely on a hierarchy of memory for optimization, where the smallest, fastest memory—registers—is located closest to the core and provides access to data in a fraction of a nanosecond.

While atomic clocks measure time using the movement of electrons between energy levels, nuclear clocks track energy shifts within atomic nuclei to achieve greater accuracy.

Humans can distinguish an estimated 10 million colors—a number that is limited by photopigments that only activate when exposed to specific wavelengths of light.

Watch some effects of special relativity become increasingly more apparent in 'A Slower Speed of Light,' a video game prototype from the MIT Game Lab.