Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 | This article relies on a single source. (April 2023) |
 17.3" flat panel monitor | |
| Type | video monitor |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Silicon Graphics |
| Available | 1998 |
| Website | sgi.com |
The 1600SW is a widescreen flat panel video monitor from Silicon Graphics introduced in 1998. It won many awards after release and sold 54,000 units. It is notable for longevity, with used models still actively traded on eBay a decade later, though difficult to adapt the OpenLDI video interface to modern video cards.[citation needed]. SGI released a separate device to resolve this problem roughly a year later, the MultiLink Adapter.
The 1600SW was advanced for its time, featuring a 17.3 inch diagonal wide screen panel in a market then dominated by CRT monitors. The 1600SW has a 25:16 aspect ratio (referred to by SGI as SuperWide) with a resolution of 1600 x 1024 pixels. The refresh rate is 60 Hz in 24-bit color and 110 dpi, which makes a smaller dot pitch than most competitive monitors. The 1600SW shared the same styling motif as the SGI Visual Workstation 320, 540, and O2, with a unique off-center mount. The display won several international awards and compares well to modern displays produced a decade later. It was introduced at about US$2,500 (equivalent to $4,940 in 2025).[1]
Formac sold the same monitor bundled with its own OpenLDI graphics adapter as the ProNitron 18/500, Radius sold the monitor as the Artica which differs mainly in a translucent “blueberry” & white case themed to match the latest fruit-colored Powermac G3 and a conventional mount. SGI sold the monitor primarily as Model #AM173Y01.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The 1600SW is a widescreen flat panel video monitor from Silicon Graphics introduced in 1998. It won many awards after release and sold 54,000 units. It is notable for longevity, with used models still actively traded on eBay a decade later, though difficult to adapt the OpenLDI video interface to modern video cards.. SGI released a separate device to resolve this problem roughly a year later, the MultiLink Adapter. The 1600SW was advanced for its time, featuring a 17.3 inch diagonal wide screen panel in a market then dominated by CRT monitors. The 1600SW has a 25:16 aspect ratio (referred to by SGI as SuperWide) with a resolution of 1600 x 1024 pixels. The refresh rate is 60 Hz in 24-bit color and 110 dpi, which makes a smaller dot pitch than most competitive monitors. The 1600SW shared the same styling motif as the SGI Visual Workstation 320, 540, and O2, with a unique off-center mount. The display won several international awards and compares well to modern displays produced a decade later. It was introduced at about US$2,500 (equivalent to $4,940 in 2025). Formac sold the same monitor bundled with its own OpenLDI graphics adapter as the ProNitron 18/500, Radius sold the monitor as the Artica which differs mainly in a translucent “blueberry” & white case themed to match the latest fruit-colored Powermac G3 and a conventional mount. SGI sold the monitor primarily as Model #AM173Y01.
OpenLDI (Open LVDS Display Interface) is a high-bandwidth digital-video interface standard for connecting graphics/video processors to LCD monitors. Even though the promoter’s group originally designed it for the desktop computer to monitor application, the majority of applications today are industrial display connections. For example, displays in medical imaging, machine vision, and construction equipment use the OpenLDI chipsets. OpenLDI is based on the FPD-Link specification, which was the de facto standard for transferring graphics and video data through notebook computer hinges since the late 1990s. Both OpenLDI and FPD-Link use low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) as the physical layer signaling, and the three terms have mistakenly been used synonymously. (FPD-Link and OpenLDI are largely compatible, beyond the physical-layer; specifying the same serial data-streams). The OpenLDI standard was promoted by National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Silicon Graphics (SGI) and others. OpenLDI wasn't used in many of the intended applications after losing the computer-to-monitor interconnect application to a competing standard, Digital Visual Interface (DVI). The SGI 1600SW was the only monitor produced in significant quantities with an OpenLDI connection, though it had minor differences from the final published standards. The 1600SW used a 36-pin MDR36 male connector with a pinout that differs from that of the 36-pin centronics-style connector in the OpenLDI standard. Sony produced some VAIO displays and laptops using the standard. (According to the SGI 1600SW entry, a few other displays were made by various manufacturers using the OpenLDI standard.)
SGI Visual Workstation is a series of workstation computers that are designed and manufactured by SGI. Unlike its other product lines, which used the 64-bit MIPS RISC architecture, the line used Intel Pentium II and III processors and shipped with Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 as its operating system instead of IRIX. However, the Visual Workstation 320 and 540 models deviated from the architecture of IBM-compatible PCs by using SGI's ARCS firmware instead of a traditional BIOS, internal components adapted from its MIPS-based products, and other proprietary components that made them incompatible with internal hardware designed for standard PCs and hence unable to run other versions of Microsoft Windows, especially Windows 9x. By contrast, the remaining models in the line are standard PCs, using VIA Technologies chipsets, Nvidia video cards, and standard components.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Founded in Mountain View, California, in November 1981 by James H. Clark, the computer scientist and entrepreneur perhaps best known for founding Netscape (with Marc Andreessen). Its initial market was 3D graphics computer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time. Early systems were based on the Geometry Engine that Clark and Marc Hannah had developed at Stanford University, and were derived from Clark's broader background in computer graphics. The Geometry Engine was the first very-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of a geometry pipeline, specialized hardware that accelerated the "inner-loop" geometric computations needed to display three-dimensional images. For much of its history, the company focused on 3D imaging and was a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market. Silicon Graphics reincorporated as a Delaware corporation in January 1990. Through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity Wintel machines began to erode SGI's stronghold in the 3D market. The porting of Maya to other platforms was a major event in this process. SGI made several attempts to address this, including a disastrous move from its existing MIPS platforms to the Intel Itanium, as well as introducing its own Linux-based Intel IA-32 based workstations and servers that failed in the market. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as a supercomputer vendor, a move that also failed. On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to Rackable Systems, a deal finalized on May 11, 2009, with Rackable assuming the name Silicon Graphics International. The remnants of Silicon Graphics, Inc. became Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.