A Comparison of the Legibility of Three Types of Electronic Digital Displays

A series of experiments was carried out to compare the legibility of three different typos of electronic digital display. The three displays, namely the cold cathode, the side illumination and the straight projection types, were examined under varying ambient light levels and viewing positions. The two performance criteria used in the investigations were recognition time for a single digit and accuracy of report of a four digit number. Results indicated that there was little difference between the cold cathode and the straight projection types under the conditions used in the experiment. However, the side illumination display gave a significantly poorer performance score than cither of the two other displays. It was also shown that performance decrements would result if any of the displays wore used in ambient light levels of greater than 22 foot candles.