{"id":677,"date":"2010-07-26T09:49:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T14:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=677"},"modified":"2010-07-26T12:06:38","modified_gmt":"2010-07-26T17:06:38","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-the-whole-dam-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/677\/retro-scan-of-the-week-the-whole-dam-thing","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> The Whole Dam Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/pivot_1700_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/pivot_1700_small.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait Display Labs Pivot 1700 Monitor Ad - 1997\" class=\"centered\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>The Portrait Display Labs Pivot 1700<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>When I was a kid, I found myself wondering why all monitors didn&#8217;t rotate from a horizontal to a vertical orientation.  I thought I had invented the idea myself.  Turns out, at least one company actually did make a monitor like that &#8212; the Pivot 1700 &#8212; and you&#8217;re looking at it now.<\/p>\n<p>Full-page displays were something of a marketing fad during the rise of the desktop publishing revolution from the mid-1980s to early 1990s.  They were designed with a vertical orientation so that someone could read or edit a full 8.5&#8243; x 11&#8243; letter-sized page on screen at one time.<\/p>\n<p>I have no doubt those displays came in handy for certain document designers and secretaries, but their high price and specialized function limited them to a small market.  To this day I have never seen one being used in the wild, although I have encountered a few full page displays out of service in my collecting adventures.<\/p>\n<p>In more recent years, I&#8217;ve seen some LCD monitors that can rotate on their base to change orientations rather easily.  There&#8217;s no doubt that it&#8217;s a much easier trick to pull off considering the small size and weight of LCD panels verses their bulky CRT counterparts.  Now whether anybody needs it or not with today&#8217;s super high resolultion 30&#8243; displays, I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p><center><em><small>[ From PC Magazine, March 4, 1997, p.242 ]<\/small><\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong>  What&#8217;s the largest CRT computer monitor you&#8217;ve ever used?  How big is your monitor (any kind) now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Portrait Display Labs Pivot 1700 When I was a kid, I found myself wondering why all monitors didn&#8217;t rotate from a horizontal to a vertical orientation. I thought I had invented the idea myself. Turns out, at least one company actually did make a monitor like that &#8212; the Pivot 1700 &#8212; and you&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27,26,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}