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The $350,000 big-screen, 3D 'VisWall'

At Tufts University, the VisWall that casts molecules and more into eye-popping 3D relief on an 8-by-14-foot screen

Jon Skillings Editorial director
Jon Skillings is an editorial director at CNET, where he's worked since 2000. A born browser of dictionaries, he honed his language skills as a US Army linguist (Polish and German) before diving into editing for tech publications -- including at PC Week and the IDG News Service -- back when the web was just getting under way, and even a little before. For CNET, he's written on topics from GPS, AI and 5G to James Bond, aircraft, astronauts, brass instruments and music streaming services.
Expertise AI, tech, language, grammar, writing, editing Credentials
  • 30 years experience at tech and consumer publications, print and online. Five years in the US Army as a translator (German and Polish).
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Jon Skillings
VisBox

It used to be that if you wanted to get a good look at microscopic bits of matter, you had to have to use, well, a microscope. You'd smoosh a drop of liquid between two small glass plates, slip them under the lens, and then fiddle with the focus until the mitochondria -- hopefully -- came into view. At least, that's how it was in my high school biology class way back when (and never mind those film strips).

Things are different if you're a scientific researcher at a 21st-century institution of higher learning. Take the Tufts University School of Engineering, which has the luxury of a $350,000 scientific display device called the VisWall, from company called VisBox, that casts molecules and more into eye-popping 3D relief on an 8-by-14-foot screen. In flat-screen mode, it's said to be twice as sharp as an HDTV--just the thing for studying the inner workings of the colon, apparently.

Read more from The Boston Globe: "Plasma TV has nothing on this visionary virtual device"