Editing Scoreboard (section)

==Technology==
[[Image:20070616 Chris Young visits Wrigley (4)-edit3.jpg|thumb|[[Wrigley Field]] uses a hand operated scoreboard, but added a video board at the bottom of it in 2004. The video board was removed in 2015 upon the building of video boards in right and left-center fields.]]
[[File:Lucas Oil Stadium WCNA tour 2024-10-04 200152671.jpg|thumb|right|The scoreboard control panel in the video booth at [[Lucas Oil Stadium]]]]
Prior to the 1980s most electronic scoreboards were electro-mechanical.  They contained [[relay]]s or [[stepping switch]]es controlling digits consisting of incandescent [[light bulb]]s.  Beginning in the 1980s, advances in [[solid state electronics]] permitted major improvements in scoreboard technology.  High power [[semiconductor]]s such as [[thyristor]]s and [[transistor]]s replaced mechanical [[relay]]s, [[light-emitting diode]]s first replaced [[light bulb]]s for indoor scoreboards and then, as their brightness increased, outdoor scoreboards. [[Light-emitting diode]]s last many times as long as [[light bulb]]s, are not subject to breakage, and are much more efficient at converting electrical energy to light.  The newest light emitting diodes can last up to 100,000 hours before having to be replaced.  Advances in large-scale [[integrated circuit]]s permitted the introduction of [[computer]] control.  This also made it [[cost effective]] to send the signals that control the operation of the scoreboard either through the existing [[Alternating current|AC]] [[wire]]s providing [[Electric power|power]] to the scoreboard or through the air. [[Power line communication|Powerline]] [[modem]]s permit the [[digital control]] signals to be sent over the [[AC power|AC]] [[electric power transmission|power line]]s.  The most common method of sending [[digital data]] over power lines at rates less than 2400 bits per second is called [[frequency shift keying]] (FSK).  Two radio frequencies represent [[binary numeral system|binary]] 0 and 1. [[Radio transmission]] such as FSK sends data digitally.  Until recently [[radio transmission]] was subject to short range and [[Interference (communication)|interference]] by other [[radio]] sources.  A fairly recent technology called [[spread spectrum]] permits much more robust radio control of scoreboards. [[Spread spectrum]], like the name implies, distributes the signal over a wide portion of the [[radio spectrum]].  This helps the signal resist interference which is usually confined to a narrow [[frequency band]].