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Eracade Era Museum · Worksheet 1 of 8

The Vector Hall, 1977–1982

NameDate

Read the Vector Hall (about twenty minutes), then answer in your own words.

A television builds its picture one line at a time. How does a vector screen draw a line instead?
Why did a vector picture start to flicker if the designer drew too many lines?
Name two places, other than an arcade, where you might have found a vector cabinet.
Why did three initials on a high-score table matter so much to players?
Give two reasons why raster screens replaced vector hardware.

Look closely

Play Vector Volley for two minutes, or watch a partner play. Hit the ball once with a still paddle and once while moving. Sketch the path the ball takes each time.

Make your own

Design a spaceship from no more than six straight lines, joining dots on the grid. Mark the front. Under it, say in one sentence why fewer lines was better on a vector screen.

Printed from eracade.com/museum/hall/vector/

For teachers: where each answer is in the hall

The glass: a beam is aimed at a point and dragged to another; the phosphor lights along the path.
The glass: the beam cannot get round the whole list in time, so lines fade before they are redrawn.
The room: bowling alley, pizza restaurant, cinema foyer, ferry terminal, laundrette, corner shop.
The room: nobody could prove who you were; the letters were a public signature you came back to check.
What ended the era: vector circuits were hard to repair and costly; raster sets were mass-produced, showed colour and filled shapes, used cheap memory.

The look-closely and make-your-own tasks have no single right answer. Ask pupils to explain their choice in one sentence.