The earliest projector recognized as a useful data projector was
the BarcoVision projector, introduced in 1981 by Barco, a Belgian
company. The projector used three cathode ray tubes, one each for
red, green and blue images. Although CRT projectors had been around
for some years, the image resolution was not sufficient to be
useful. The BarcoVision was used for the European launch of the IBM
PC. The projector was large and heavy, weighing in at more than
seventy pounds, took about one hour to line up and achieve thermal
stability and was notoriously unreliable.
In the US Gene Dolgoff is credited with the production of the
first LCD projector in 1984. Dolgoff has a long history of image
processing and display developments with the LCD projector being
one of his earliest.
The CRT projectors had a head start on LCD models and it took
almost two decades for the LCD projectors to fully dominate the
projection market.