Flat Panel Displays In the Beginning And How They Evolved

摘要

The path of the evolution of today's high information content flat panel displays is littered with failed attempts. The origin of today's most successful Flat Panel Display, the a-Si Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display, started with, perhaps, the R. Williams domains observation (at the David Sarnoff Research Center) of dynamic scattering as described in U. S. Patent 3,332,485 (1967) applied for on November 9,1962. The climax is exhibited today in the Samsung HDTV. Samsung is one of the world's largest manufacturer of a-Si Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Displays. The end points are merely symbolic in time chosen for this presentation that is intended to highlight the major discoveries, show-stopping demonstrations, and brilliant contributions during the intervening period of 48 years. There is also social and political commentary about why Flat Panel Displays evolved the way they did. There is no attempt to show the broad, holistic nature of the human endeavor, all the science and technology worked on, and all of the research carried out to find the holy grail of electronic information displays. This is not a documentary on the history of electronic displays; it is the success story. To make this success story more digestible, it is framed in ten-year phases.