Editing Hercules Graphics Card (section)

==History==
The Hercules Graphics Card was released to fill a gap in the IBM video product lineup. When the [[IBM Personal Computer]] was launched in 1981, it had two graphics cards available: the [[Color Graphics Adapter]] (CGA) and the [[Monochrome Display Adapter|Monochrome Display And Printer Adapter]] (MDA). CGA offered low-resolution ({{resx|320x200}}) color graphics and medium-resolution ({{resx|640x200}}) monochrome graphics, while MDA offers a sharper text mode (equivalent to {{resx|720×350}}) but has no per-pixel addressing modes and is limited to a fixed [[Character encoding|character set]].

These adapters were quickly found to be inadequate by the market, creating a demand for a card that offers high-resolution graphics and text.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gibson |first=Steve |date=19 Sep 1988 |title=IBM's EGA unified backward-compatible CGA, MDA, Hercules standards |pages=49 |work=InfoWorld |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mDoEAAAAMBAJ&q=IBM+MDA+more+popular+than+CGA&pg=PA49}}</ref> The founder of [[Hercules Computer Technology]], Van Suwannukul, created the Hercules Graphics Card so that he could work on his [[Thesis|doctoral thesis]] on an [[IBM PC]] using the [[Thai alphabet]], impossible with the low resolution of CGA or the fixed character set of MDA.<ref>{{Cite news |date=16 May 1989 |title=Monitors for VGA and beyond |pages=96 |work=PC Magazine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2jkWJsu_9CoC&q=van+suwannukul+hercules&pg=RA1-PA96}}</ref> It initially retailed in 1982 for $499.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Welch |first=Mark |date=1 September 1986 |title=Hercules improves its monochrome card |pages=42 |work=InfoWorld |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cS8EAAAAMBAJ&dq=hercules+graphics+price&pg=PA42}}</ref>