E-paper: Reality is closing in!
The critical point where we are crossing from analog to digital delivery of printed materials is coming closer and closer. And ironically we are seeing technologies begin to blur that line even more.
MIT Technology Review – one of my very favorite publications – delivered up two articles on e-paper recently. These solutions are coming at the problem from two different directions, but aim for the same end result: presentation of digital images that rival printed products and have the appearance of ink on paper.
E-Paper Solution #1
In April, a consortium that includes Sun Chemical – ink and pigments supplier – announced new technology that delivers images with “pixels containing ink reservoirs…” I immediately connected Sun Chemical and “ink reservoirs” and had to stop and read.
Each pixel is a little well containing ink; just black right now. While color is not yet available, the addition of red, green and blue color filters on each pixel will create color displays. Why red, green, and blue? Light is made up of those three colors and they combine to deliver the entire spectrum.
E-Paper Solution #2
Fast forward a few days, and the May 8 edition of Technology Review announced a new development from Philips Research, in the Netherlands, that suspends colored particles in a clear liquid and moves them around to give the effect of color or white. It gets really interesting when you read this:
Each pixel is made up of two microcapsule chambers: one containing yellow and cyan particles, the other, below, containing magenta and black particles. Within each microcapsule, one set of colored particles is charged positively while the other is charged negatively.
Wait! That’s CMYK – that’s printing!
We’ve come along way, baby!
At the Seybold Seminars Conference 1999 in San Francisco, I got my first glimpse of “e-paper” when John Seely Brown, then director of Xerox PARC, held up a dingy-looking piece of plastic. He said:
“Think of it as the world’s first truly erasable paper. You can print today’s news on yesterday’s paper. The paper recycles itself.”
Almost 10 years later, we’re rapidly approaching the day when that will happen.
Won’t be long now!
