Fang Chen Luo and their team at the Thin-Film Devices department of Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1974, and the term was introduced into the literature in 1975.

Given an m × n matrix, the number of connectors needed to address the display is m + n (just like in passive matrix technology). Each pixel is attached to a switch-device, which actively maintains the pixel state while other pixels are being addressed, also preventing crosstalk