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Development

In 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a CRT TV receiver with a mechanical video camera that received images with a 40-line resolution. By 1927, he improved the resolution to 100 lines, which was unrivaled until 1931. By 1928, he was the first to transmit human faces in half-tones on a CRT display.

In 1927, Philo Farnsworth created a TV prototype.

The CRT was named in 1929 by inventor Vladimir K. Zworykin. He was subsequently hired by RCA, which was granted a trademark for the term "Kinescope", RCA's term for a CRT, in 1932; it voluntarily released the term to the public domain in 1950.

In the 1930s, Allen B. DuMont made the first CRTs to last 1,000 hours of use, which was one of the factors that led to the widespread adoption of TV.

The first commercially made electronic TV sets with cathode-ray tubes were manufactured by Telefunken in Germany in 1934.

In 1947, the cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first to incorporate a cathode-ray tube screen, was created.

From 1949 to the early 1960s, there was a shift from circular CRTs to rectangular CRTs, although the first rectangular CRTs were made in 1938 by Telefunken. While circular CRTs were the norm, European TV sets often blocked portions of the screen to make it appear somewhat rectangular while American sets often left the entire front of the CRT exposed or only blocked the upper and lower portions of the CRT.

In 1954, RCA produced some of the first color CRTs, the 15GP22 CRTs used in the CT-100, the first color TV set to be mass produced. The first rectangular color CRTs were also made in 1954. However, the first rectangular color CRTs to be offered to the public were made in 1963. One of the challenges that had to be solved to produce the rectangular color CRT was convergence at the corners of the CRT. In 1965, brighter rare earth phosphors began replacing dimmer and cadmium-containing red and green phosphors. Eventually blue phosphors were replaced as well.

The size of CRTs increased over time, from 20 inches in 1938, to 21 inches in 1955, 25 inches by 1974, 30 inches by 1980, 35 inches by 1985, and 43 inches by 1989. However, experimental 31 inch CRTs were made as far back as 1938.

In 1960, the Aiken tube was invented. It was a CRT in a flat-panel display format with a single electron gun. Deflection was electrostatic and magnetic, but due to patent problems, it was never put into production. It was also envisioned as a head-up display in aircraft. By the time patent issues were solved, RCA had already invested heavily in conventional CRTs.

1968 marked the release of Sony Trinitron brand with the model KV-1310, which was based on Aperture Grille technology. It was acclaimed to have improved the output brightness. The Trinitron screen was identical with its upright cylindrical shape due to its unique triple cathode single gun construction.

In 1987, flat-screen CRTs were developed by Zenith for computer monitors, reducing reflections and helping increase image contrast and brightness. Such CRTs were expensive, which limited their use to computer monitors. Attempts were made to produce flat-screen CRTs using inexpensive and widely available float glass.

In 1990, the first CRT with HD resolution, the Sony KW-3600HD, was released to the market. It is considered to be "historical material" by Japan's national museum. The Sony KWP-5500HD, an HD CRT projection TV, was released in 1992.

In the mid-1990s, some 160 million CRTs were made per year.

In the mid-2000s, Canon and Sony presented the surface-conduction electron-emitter display and field-emission displays, respectively. They both were flat-panel displays that had one (SED) or several (FED) electron emitters per subpixel in place of electron guns. The electron emitters were placed on a sheet of glass and the electrons were accelerated to a nearby sheet of glass with phosphors using an anode voltage. The electrons were not focused, making each subpixel essentially a flood beam CRT. They were never put into mass production as LCD technology was significantly cheaper, eliminating the market for such displays.

The last large-scale manufacturer of (in this case, recycled) CRTs, Videocon, ceased in 2015. CRT TVs stopped being made around the same time.

In 2012, Samsung SDI and several other major companies were fined by the European Commission for price fixing of TV cathode-ray tubes. The same occurred in 2015 in the US and in Canada in 2018.

Worldwide sales of CRT computer monitors peaked in 2000, at 90 million units, while those of CRT TVs peaked in 2005 at 130 million units.