Colors

Basic Monitor Color

 
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When you were young, you learned to finger paint using the primary colors red, yellow and blue. You learned that by mixing colors, you could create new colors like orange, green, and purple.

A computer monitor uses three colors as well to create all the colors which you see on the screen. The monitor was modeled after a television monitory which used cathode rays to shoot focused beams of light onto a sheet of glass covered with tiny microscopic phosphors. These phosphors are colored so that when the cathode ray strikes them they illuminate a certain color, and remain illuminated for a short burst of time.

When no signal is sent, the cathode ray does not shoot a beam and that part of the screen remains black. When the cathode ray shoots beams at all phosphors equally and with enough intensity, the screen turns white. That is we see white, but actually, if you look close enough, the screen is saturated with tiny pixels (picture elements) of Red, Green, and Blue color. These three colors form white (at full and equal intensity) and black (with little but still equal intensity).

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