I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.
An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.
If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.
That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.
I think Nixie tubes are actually a kind of neon lamp rather than incandescent bulbs; but yes they are very mid-20th century.
They’re fluorescent tubes, yes. I wasn’t specific about what kind of lightbulbs.