# 1970, phosphor > The first of the ten ways of seeing. A green tube is the only light in the room, the picture is drawn in glowing cells, and a block cursor waits in the pupil. Every other era was built to match what this one got right. - URL: https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-phosphor - Kind: Interface - Made: Oct 2026 - Author: Arun Kumaar Sreenivasan - Part of: How this was made (https://www.kiruk.in/making) - Agent file: https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-phosphor/agent.md ```text KIRUK/EYE ERA 1970 MEDIUM CRT-MONO LISTING 1 OF 10 ``` ![The loader eye in 1970: a green phosphor picture of an eye with a terminal reflected in it](https://www.kiruk.in/eye/posters/1970-wide.avif) **FIG 1.** The loader's 1970 poster. The tube's glow is the only light on the face. The glass of the tube is the only edge in the whole set of ten: here the frame is the medium. ## What you are looking at You are the terminal. The person in front of you is reading your screen in a dark room, and you can see your own text in their eye. 1970 is the benchmark era. It worked before the others did, because four things agreed: the tube lights the face, the camera is tuned to that light, the tube's own picture fills the frame, and a cursor in the pupil says "type here". The rule for the nine eras after it was to give each one the same four. - Device: green-phosphor CRT, 4:3, 244 by 183 mm, 600 mm from the face - Other light: none - Gaze: reads five lines, about 750 ms a stop, a blink every 5.5 s - Sign: a block cursor in the pupil - Leaves: collapses like a tube losing power, 200 ms - Arrives: warms up, 420 ms - Enter: 400 ms, the pupil floods the screen with #000000 ## The light Nothing in this picture is lit by anything except the page. [The page is the light](https://www.kiruk.in/making/page-is-the-light): the site's real 1970 home is captured and stood in front of the eye at the size of a real tube. ![The 1970 home page of the site, green text on black](https://www.kiruk.in/eye/screens/1970.webp) **FIG 2.** The page the eye is reading, as captured for the cornea. Change the home page, run the capture again, and the reflection changes with it. The iris is not green. It is the same dark brown as in every era. Its fibres show only where the phosphor reaches them. ## The medium The finished frame is drawn once more, as a tube would draw it: cells of phosphor that glow, hold, and fade. Bright things leave a short trail when they move. That trail is the only idle effect the era is allowed. ## The sign A block cursor sits in the pupil and blinks. It is the one thing that moves at rest, and it is the invitation. On enter, the cursor holds lit while the pupil opens, the black of the pupil becomes the black of the terminal, and you land on the 1970 home at its prompt. ## The fit ![The 1970 eye with thin coloured curves drawn along its lid edges](https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-phosphor/align-1970.webp) **FIG 3.** The alignment overlay. The thin curves are the lid edges as the CPU copy of the anatomy computes them, drawn over the render. If the curves and the picture disagree, the shader is wrong. This check runs in all ten eras, because [it is one person](https://www.kiruk.in/making/one-person) in all ten. ## What was thrown away The first attempt to "fine-tune" 1970 redesigned it [as ASCII characters](https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-as-ascii). It was more 1970 and less of an eye. > it just misses so much detail… changed the entire vibe > > Arun, reviewing 1970 drawn as ASCII, 20 Oct 2026 That round is why [the whole face stays visible](https://www.kiruk.in/making/whole-face) in every era. The era is a lens on the detail. It is never a replacement for it. ## Lineage ### Built with - [The page is the light](https://www.kiruk.in/making/page-is-the-light) (Pattern, Sep 2026): The eye has one key light, and it is the site itself. Each era's real home page is captured and stood in front of the eye at true size, where it lights the face and shows in the cornea. - [The blink cut](https://www.kiruk.in/making/blink-cut) (Pattern, 21 Oct 2026): Eras change the way a person changes what they see: by blinking. The old picture leaves as its machine switched off, the lids hide the swap, and the new one arrives as its machine warmed up. ### Obeys - [One person, every era](https://www.kiruk.in/making/one-person) (Principle, 20 Oct 2026): The same face, skin, iris and framing in all ten eras. Eras may change the screen, the light, the lens, the medium, the gaze and the sign. They may never change the person. - [The whole face, always](https://www.kiruk.in/making/whole-face) (Principle, 21 Oct 2026): Brow hairs, pores, lid folds, lashes, iris fibres and the page in the cornea stay visible at rest in every era. Anything that hides the face may appear only inside a cut. ### Thrown away to get here - [1970 as ASCII](https://www.kiruk.in/making/1970-as-ascii) (Dead end, 20 Oct 2026): Asked to fine-tune the first three eras, the build redesigned them. 1970 became an eye made of typed characters. It was more 1970 and much less of an eye. ### A way of seeing - [The loader eye](https://www.kiruk.in/making/loader-eye) (Interface, May to Nov 2026): One human eye, drawn live in the browser and lit only by the screen it is looking at. It was built four times in six months, measured against a photograph of my own eye, and it changes era by blinking.