Shadow mask in the context of "Liquid-crystal display"

A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a frame of video on an analog television set (TV), digital raster graphics on a computer monitor, or other phenomena like radar targets. A CRT in a TV is commonly called a picture tube. CRTs have also been used as memory devices, in which case the screen is not intended to be visible to an observer. The term cathode ray was used to describe electron beams when they were first discovered, before it was understood that what was emitted from the cathode was a beam of electrons.

In CRT TVs and computer monitors, the entire front area of the tube is scanned repeatedly and systematically in a fixed pattern called a raster. In color devices, an image is produced by controlling the intensity of each of three electron beams, one for each additive primary color (red, green, and blue) with a video signal as a reference. In modern CRT monitors and TVs the beams are bent by magnetic deflection, using a deflection yoke. Electrostatic deflection is commonly used in oscilloscopes.

Trichromacy or trichromatism is the possession of three independent channels for conveying color information, derived from the three different types of cone cells in the eye. Organisms with trichromacy are called trichromats.

The normal explanation of trichromacy is that the organism's retina contains three types of color receptors (called cone cells in vertebrates) with different absorption spectra. In actuality, the number of such receptor types may be greater than three, since different types may be active at different light intensities. In vertebrates with three types of cone cells, at low light intensities the rod cells may contribute to color vision.

A scan line (also scanline) is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern, such as a line of video on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) display of a television set or computer monitor.

On CRT screens the horizontal scan lines are visually discernible, even when viewed from a distance, as alternating colored lines and black lines, especially when a progressive scan signal with below maximum vertical resolution is displayed. This is sometimes used today as a visual effect in computer graphics.