etymology - Why do we call a computer or TV display a "screen"?


I was wondering about why we call TV and computer displays "screens", and couldn't find any clear etymology for the term's use for displays.



  • A screen is used to prevent things like bugs and leaves from going through a window, and goes across the window frame.

  • A screen is used in a printing method, and is typically stretched across a rectangular frame.

  • A screen is a shield or protective barrier.


My guess has to do with the hardware used in early displays. Perhaps the fields of tiny red, green, and blue cells looked like the screens used on windows and such, and the term stuck even as the hardware changed?



Answer



I think it comes from the earlier usage referred to projected images but mainly from its later usage with movies:


Screen:




  • Meaning "flat vertical surface for reception of projected images" is from 1810, originally in reference to magic lantern shows; later of movies. Transferred sense of "cinema world collectively" is attested from 1914.



(Etymonline)


Screen:




  • The viewing surface or area of a movie, or moving picture or slide presentation.

  • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 1, The Celebrity:

    • The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.





(Wiktionary)


Ngram: Movie screen vs TV screen vs Computer screen


The following extract from csmt.uchicago.edu examines in depth the complexity of the term "screen" and suggests that the origin of the term meaning display may derive from its dichotomy meaning both display and displayer.





  • An effort to categorize the word screen is at first problematic due to its various diverging and converging definitions. Yet when looked at from a different perspective, these problematic definitions facilitate a more encompassing understanding of the medium and its message. Though the screen acts as a neutral medium, it becomes biased once its message is considered.




  • The third grouping considers the screen as both a display and a mask. OED defines screen as a noun as "an upright surface for display: (a) of objects, (b) of images, (c) in photography, as a focusing screen." In the instance of showing images on the screen, both screen and "display" become verbs: "To show (a picture) on a screen; to project on to a screen as with a magic lantern or film projector; to exhibit as a production for the cinema or television." This is perhaps the best known form of the word screen, both in noun and verb form, the screen is both being displayed and the display. In Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" the images are displayed on the wall which acts as the display:



    • And you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen
      which marionette players have in front of them [...] and [the humans] see
      only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? (514)




  • In this instance sight, or the act of seeing [Eye and Gaze] the shadows, is a form of screening. Yet there are elements of masking since the images are shadows; if the display of images is supposed to be clear, then what does it mean that the shadows are irresolute? The answer lays in the dichotomy between the screen as a display and displayer and the screen as a mask and masker. While the screen functions as both the display and the act of displaying, it is also a type of mask.




  • Another OED definition of screen as a noun is also as "a wall thrown out in front of a building and masking the façade"; "something interposed so as to conceal from view," like the confessional, itself a form of translator. Screen as a verb also has mask-like connotations: "To hide from view as with a screen; to shelter from observation or recognition". Thus display and mask are antonyms. Ideally, the screen as a display is neutral, in that it does not filter that which it displays; the screen as a mask is biased because it filters what it will show. To complicate things further is the question of what this means for the viewer. It is possible that since the screen can be both a display and a mask, that there can be both neutrality and bias in every projection; an image on display can be biased while a masked image can be neutral.





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