From monochrome to Multitouch A History of the PC screens

The development of PC display technologies over the last 30 years has taken us through many chapters: from IBM, the creator of the IBM PC, pioneering color display technologies (and ceding development to third-parties ATI, 3dfx, and nVidia); to the quest to provide both sharp text and colorful graphics; through the ever-increasing size of displays; to LCD flat panels overtaking TV-type CRTs; the move to 3D graphics rendering and, currently, to 3D viewing.

Here's a brief history of these and other milestones in PC graphics history.The IBM PC and other early PCs provided three display choices: monochrome display adapter (MDA) provided crisp 720x350 text resolution, but no graphics at all, and your monitor contained green, amber, or (if you were lucky) white phosphors. The second option, the color graphics adapter (CGA), included choice of two-color 640x200 or four-color 320x200 graphics (such as this screen shot from the original F-15 Strike Eagle game) and text. For even fuzzier results, you could use a composite video signal out of the IBM CGA adapter instead of the normal 9-pin digital port (the same physical port was used by MDA and CGA).

Source:
http://respectedadmins.com/blog/from-monochrome-to-multitouch-a-history-of-the-pc-screens/