E Ink in 1999
Using electronic ink, a flat
panel display can be printed on
top of nearly any material
using printing presses. The
resulting display is much less
expensive than an LCD, draws
50 times less power, offers
better contrast with higher
resolution, and can be printed
onto a flexible piece of paper
Notes:
http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980706/coo6
�This Cambridge, Mass., startup is out to create multipurpose screens that are as thin, readable, reflective, flat, and flexible as paper. E Ink's electronic paper could find its way into everything from computer screens to books, newspapers, advertising, television, and all kinds of consumer packaging�. The E Ink page works a bit like those images you see created at halftime at the Super Bowl, when tens of thousands of fans hold up and flip placards from one colored side to another to spell out words or create an image. On the E ink page, millions of dot-sized microcapsules play the role of the placards. Each capsule contains colored ink and white paint particles. Electrical charges from a circuit embedded in a filmy background behind attract or repel the white chips, bringing either the white or the ink to the surface of the microcapsule. Hearst Corp., Motorola, ad agency holding company Interpublic, and some venture capitalists have backed E Ink with $15.8 million.
�In 1999 the company expects to roll out its first product: store signs, which will become embedded with pagers. That way a retail chain, say, could beam a signal from headquarters and simultaneously update all the prices or marketing displays in its shoe departments. Reusable fax and printer paper may come next. Instead of blasting ink onto paper, printers would simply tap charges onto a sheet of microcapsules. Eventually, Comiskey and Albert want E-paper to work for displays on cell phones and watches, and as hidden signs on household appliances: the signs would stay black until they have an event to describe (like �I'm empty�)�. E Ink thinks its pages could serve as the display to which the book companies deliver content. - See www.eink.com