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The tech of CRTs seems almost futuristic to me. Bending electron beams with magnets to travel through a vacuum so they hit exotic materials at precisely the right locations seems much cooler than just miniaturizing LED arrays.
That's nothing. Look into how vacuum tubes work to achieve logic gates, rectify AC-to-DC, and more. Compared to solid-state electronics, the fundamentals aren't even the same sport, let alone the same game. People really were living in a different world 80 years ago.
I find this about a lot of old tech. Like precisely etching a piece of vinyl in such a way that it vibrates just right to get the music you want vs bouncing a laser off a reflective disc to read a bunch of 0s and 1s.
We went from the end-product achieving something through great complexity, to the end-product being made with great complexity so it could active something simply.