Neon bulb logic elements link?

[Jim Battle]

der Mouse wrote:

>>>You could probably make a coincident-voltage memory from them... but
>>>they'd be slow I think, but pretty.
>>
>>Not all that slow.  The first plasma panels -- invented at the
>>University of Illinois and used in the PLATO system terminals -- used
>>the display pixels as memories.
> 
> 
> Yes-- and they were pig-slow.  (I used PLATO in the late '70s, and even
> then it felt slow to me.)

I used it for a grand total of one class around 1982 at the university 
of illinois, where it was all dreamed up.

How much of that was due to the slow write times to the pixels vs. the 
fact that hundreds of terminals were hitting the mainframe driving it 
all over serial lines?