Think Retro: Bring back the Flying Toasters<article>
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Sometimes, things don’t strike you as unusual until you come to explain them to someone else. I have a young cousin, for example—young enough that she uses #yolo apparently without irony—and I suspect if I tried to explain to her that, for a period in the mid–90, pretty much any unattended Mac would eventually display a handful of winged toasters jerkily making their way across the screen, she would give me One Of Those Looks.</p><p>
Actually, fair enough; it sounds a little surreal. But this was, of course, Flying Toasters, the most famous module in the screensaver app After Dark.</p><p>
In explaining this to my young cousin, I’d probably first have to explain why screensavers were invented in the first place. Sure, today’s computers still have screensavers, but they’re usually merely decorative (one notable exception being the screensaver I use,
BOINC), and no longer required to do the job of “saving screens”. Before flat screens became commonplace, we all used CRTs, hulking great plastic cases enclosing a heavy glass vacuum tube. These worked by directing a stream of electrons—deflected with a system of magnets at the back of the tube—at the front of the screen; when the electrons hit a special phosphor coating, it would cause it to emit photons. In other words, to light up.</p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/2879119/think-retro-bring-back-the-flying-toasters.html#jump">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
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Think Retro: Bring back the Flying Toasters
