DVBST was an acronym used by Tektronix to describe their line of "Direct-View Bistable Storage Tubes". These were cathode ray tubes (CRTs) that stored information written to them using an analog technique inherent in the CRT and based upon the secondary emission of electrons from the phosphor screen itself. (See the discussion of "Analogue Storage" in the oscilloscope article.) The resulting image was visible in the continuously glowing patterns on the face of the CRT. Tektronix is a United States corporation that is currently a major presence in the test, measurement, and measuring industry. ... Cathode ray tube employing electromagnetic focus and deflection Cutaway rendering of a color CRT The cathode ray tube or CRT, invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun, is the display device that was traditionally used in most computer displays, video monitors, televisions, radar displays and oscilloscopes. ... Cathode ray tube employing electromagnetic focus and deflection Cutaway rendering of a color CRT The cathode ray tube or CRT, invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun, is the display device that was traditionally used in most computer displays, video monitors, televisions, radar displays and oscilloscopes. ... Secondary emission is a phenomenon that occurs in electron tubes where electrons impact an electrode with sufficient energy to knock additional electrons from the surface of that electrode. ... A Tektronix model 475A portable analogue oscilloscope, a very typical instrument of the late 1970s. ...

DVBST technology was anticipated by Andrew Haeff of the (United States) Naval Research Laboratory, and by Williams and Kilburn in the late 1940s. Tek's Bob Anderson reduced to practice the science and technology in the late 1950s to yield a reliable and simple DVST.

DVBSTs were used for analog oscilloscopes (first in the 564 oscilloscope, then the 601 monitor, the 611 monitor, the 7613 plug-in mainframe oscilloscope, all from Tektronix) and for computer terminals such as the archetypical Tek 4010 (the "mean green flashin' machine") and its several successors including the Tektronix 4014. Unlike other CRTs, storage tubes have a wire mesh just inside of the phosphor coating of the screen. An electron beam gun (the writing gun) traces the image on this mesh leaving a charge behind. A separate electron gun called the flood gun floods the entire mesh with a stream of electrons. Only electrons coming from the flood gun that encounter a charged area of the mesh pick up enough energy to continue to the phosphor coating on the screen. Erasure required erasing the entire screen by increasing the flow of electrons from the flood gun in a bright flash of green light, leading to the nickname. The Tektronix 4014 was an early text and graphics computer terminal based on the companys own storage tube technology. ...

Some DVBST implementations also allowed the "write-through" of a small amount of dynamically refreshed, non-stored data. This allowed the display of cursors, graphic elements under construction, and the like on computer terminals. Cursors feature in many of the interfaces between computers and their users. ...

It should also be noted that images on a storage tube are drawn on the mesh as lines i.e. continuous lines from start point to end point so that a diagonal line is drawn as a diagonal line. This differs from conventional CRTs e.g. televisions and computer monitors which draw raster lines on the phosphor of the CRT. Storage tubes typicaly had a resolution of 1280 by 1024 addressable points (not pixels). This relativly high resolution without requiring a video buffer made them ideal for use as CAD system monitors during the 70's through the mid 80's. At that time, a single storage tube display typically cost more than $20,000 US.