RESOURCES IN TECHNOLOGY ELECTRONIC INK: NEW 'SMARTS' FOR THE PRINTED WORD

摘要

Gyricon calls it Smart Paper~(TM); E Ink Corporation calls it electronic ink. Both companies have developed and are marketing a new type of electronic paper that could vastly change our communications and visual media technology. Paper has been the mainstay of written communications technology since Ts'ai Lun of China created the first quality writing surface, circa 104 AD. Ts'ai Lun took the inner bark of a mulberry tree and bamboo fibers, mixed them with water, pounded them with a wooden tool, poured the mixture onto a flat piece of coarsely woven cloth and let the water drain through, leaving only the fibers on the cloth. When the fibers dried, Lun discovered he had a writing surface that was easy to make, lightweight, and portable. The same qualities that Lun had achieved with his paper are the qualities Gyricon and E Ink hope will be the driving force in the acceptance of their electronic paper in today's global marketplace. Both companies are offshoots of major research institutions: Gyricon from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and E Ink from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory. Both firms base their core technologies on tiny, electrically charged beads, with the imaging capability controlled electronically. These two companies are not only racing against themselves to commercialize their products but are also anticipating competition from the organic light-emitting diodes that are beginning to emerge from other research laboratories (Ditlea, 2001).