The Plasma Screen Was Born to Fix a Computer Problem, Then Lost to LCD
The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Screen
Plasma displays began in 1960s Illinois as a memory-in-screen fix for PLATO terminals, not as a TV technology. Owens-Illinois commercialized the Digivue in 1971, and plasma later found niches in laptops and big-screen HDTVs. But LCD caught up on size, resolution, and manufacturing yield, and by 2013 plasma had lost nearly all its market share. Today the technology is essentially dead.
But sometimes this isn’t enough to save a technology; while some folks prefer the look of plasma screens, this preference evidently wasn’t enough to maintain production of it.