It is estimated that the human eye can distinguish over 10 million different colors thought there are far more colors than that in the total color spectrum.  With our 256 different levels of settings for our red, green and blue bulbs, we have 256x256x256 or 16.77 million colors theoretically available. How many colors can the typical monitor display? That depends upon the electronic architecture of the monitor and the video card in the computer.  When personal computers were first introduced in the late '70's monitors were "monochrome" and could only display one color - most often green.  But there were rapid improvements:

	1981, Color Graphics Adaptor (CGA) 4 colors at a resolution of 320x240.
	1984, Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) 16 different colors and resolution to 640x350 pixels.
	1987, Video Graphics Array (VGA) 256 colors at a resolution of 640x480.
	1990,Extended Graphics Array (XGA)800x600 pixel resolution in true color (16.8 million colors) and a higher 1,024x768 resolution with fewer (65,536) colors.

Monitors sold today typically support the Ultra Extended Graphics Array (UXGA) standard. UXGA can display up to 16.8 million colors and resolutions of up to 1600x1200 pixels, depending on the video memory on the video card. The resolution available depends on the number of colors displayed. Generally fewer colors can be displayed at the highest resolutions.