The first digital text on a screen…

When and what was the first digital text shown on a screen? It depends, as always, on your exact definitions of those words. But here’s one plausible candidate.

In 1947, British inventors Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn were playing around with newly invented CRTs (cathode ray tubes) which could use a scanning electron gun to light up individual phosphor dots. The technology would later become ubiquitous as the basis of the television set, but Williams and Kilburn had visions of using it to solv...