Electronic Paper

Behold the future, “electronic paper.”

“Electronic paper” is a display technology that makes possible flexible or even rollable displays which, unlike current computer screens, can be read in bright sunlight.
But, much like when LCD displays came to the market, consumers are first likely to see the technology in clocks and watches. The popular example of an electronic newspaper that automatically updates itself wirelessly is still years away.
A number of companies are currently working on such displays—LG.Philips LCD and Massachusetts-based E Ink announced last month that they have developed a protype 10-inch display, and Fujitsu showed a color display in July.
Philips’ Polymer Vision unit aims to mass-produce a rollable 5-inch display by the end of 2006, and among the first consumer products is a watch with a curved electronic paper display from Seiko Epson, due to hit the Japanese market next year.
Electronic paper was invented in the 1970s at Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center by Nick Sheridon, who now works as research director at Xerox subsidiary Gyricon, which makes electronic paper signs.
“If you remember the green-screen monitors—it drove him crazy and he was looking for something that was easier on the eyes,” Gyricon spokesman Jim Welch said.
Electronic or paper?
The technology at the heart of electronic paper? Tiny black and white particles that are suspended in capsules about the diameter of a human hair.
The particles respond to electrical charges—a negative field pushes the negatively charged black particles away to the surface, where they create a black dot. Positively charged white particles create the opposite effect.
At a 10th of a millimeter, the thickness of an ordinary sheet of paper, electronic paper is much thinner than the liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) used in today’s computers and mobile phones.
It also consumes 100 times less power because it does not require a back light and only needs electricity to change the image, not to hold it.
Like ordinary paper, it reflects light, making it readable even in difficult conditions such as direct sunlight.

I think Xerox PARC invented everything.

Posted by on November 9th, 2005 at 6:25 am


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