Essential Guide to Computing: The Story of Information Technology, The

Making An Image

There are some common elements to all of the images used by contemporary displays. First, all systems use a matrix of points to create an image. Each of these points is a picture element, or pixel in video jargon. It's important to understand how pixels are constructed.

Pixels and Dots

The first PCs could manage a matrix of dots comprising a maximum of 720 pixels vertically and 350 horizontally, for a total of 252,000 dots. Standard desktop monitors can now show 1,024 by 768 pixels (nearly 800,000 dots) and even higher matrices are available (see Table 3.1). The number of dots in the matrix is not the actual number of elements needed to make an image, at least not a color one. Color dots are actually built up from three separate ...