SPIES won’t welcome the development of the world’s first flat-panel cathode
ray tube, because they won’t find it so easy to sit outside a building and pick
up the signals from a VDU inside. Instead of using “leaky” electric coils to
steer an electron beam around a TV screen, IBM’s new display uses permanent
magnets which give nothing away.
But the new CRT from IBM’s lab in Greenock, near Glasgow, is not just
designed to deter espionage. It could also mean much cheaper flat-screen TVs.
The new display is put together mechanically from precision-aligned layers. This
is a far less…
