This press release is copyrighted by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). Its use is granted only to journalists and news media.
Stephen King's on-line success in distributing his latest novel in electronic form has resulted in publishers everywhere lining up to get into the e-book business. Although they foresee a day when everyone will be reading books and magazines on handheld devices, you could go blind trying to read an e-book on a Palm device's "gray-on-gray" screen today. Your typical handheld computer screen just can't compete with paper.
But several new display technologies believe they can. These new screens are designed to work in daylight or under a normal reading lamp. They don't require power to keep text and graphics visible, so they won't drain a handheld's battery while they're being read. And they can provide much higher resolution than was previously available.
All this is possible because the displays employ unique new technologies. One of them is made of minuscule black and white balls that form characters and images when spun into position by an electric field. Another, a new kind of color liquid crystal display, is easy on the eyes despite being chock full of cholesterol.
Best of all, these technologies are not decades off; they're just around the corner.
Contact: Richard Comerford, 212 419 7567, [email protected].For faxed copies of the complete article ["A bright new page in portable display" by Gregory Crawford, IEEE Spectrum, October 2000, pp. 38-45] or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
URL: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
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