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The gun fires straight ahead. The electrons it produces are deflected in the desired direction by electromagnets.

I don't think it's possible to create a mechanical way of moving the gun fast enough to achieve the needs of even a low-res TV screen. If it was a physical mechanism, you can imagine it'd break all the time.

Not to mention your TV would sound like it was possessed by a banshee from the servo (presumably) noise.

There was such a thing as a mechanical television:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television

Not one using an electron gun. The article is specifically about CRTs. (Of course I know about mechanical televisions; I just didn't talk about them because they weren't relevant to the topic.)

Right; the gun is fixed and the beam is "deflected" (that's the term).

No the gun does not move. The author appears to have misunderstood this. I don't find it likely that he would have used the words "physically moves to point" if he meant that the electron beam is deflected magnetically. Still, great article.

electron beam would fit better in the sentence