Slashdot Mirror
Electronic paper moving off the drawing board
rafa writes "Electronic paper is finally moving from concept to manufacturing. Xerox has made a deal with 3M to eventually manufacture it. " They're expecting about a year of figuring out the best process and such, but look for it in on the market early next year. Excellent.
I read that MIT's technology for the same purpose can deliver higher resolution.
Essentially the display is made up of thousands of tiny, round pellets that are painted black on one side and white on the other. The pellets are embedded in a very thin mat of silicone so that they are exposed on one side. The pellets are lubricated so that they can spin freely within their silicon sockets, and are given a electrostatic charge on the black side. An image can then be drawn by applying an electrostatic charge to the surface of the display, causing the pellets to spin so that the appropriately colored side is visible.
Apple will be coming out with a new media known as "digital paper" later this year after Apple execs made an impromptu visit to PARC early last year to come up with new ideas for their failing business.
Actually Xerox has had the gyricon technology for years, you can check out the IBM patent database for some of their earlier work. E Ink uses an electrophoretic display model, and not the gyricon. In theory, the E Ink display should be better (better theoretical resolution) but we shall see what happens. I have a feeling that neither one of these technologies will be the true answer (you will have to wait for me to get my act together for that one).
-AC
PARC and MIT implementation have the same goal, but use different methods. According to the above-mentioned SciAm (or was it New Scientist?) article MIT's implementation yields higher resolution. As far as I can remeber MIT's paper had a resolution of at least 300 dpi or even more. PARC's paper had a crude resolution, less than 300 dpi.
PARC and MIT implementations have the same goal, but use different methods. According to the above-mentioned SciAm (or was it New Scientist?) article MIT's implementation yields higher resolution. As far as I can remeber MIT's paper had a resolution of at least 300 dpi or even more. PARC's paper had a crude resolution, less than 300 dpi.
I believe the Xerox Epaper product and the E-ink (MIT-originated) product use different technology to do the same thing.
I think the Xerox version has little plastic spheres that are black on one side and white on the other, with an electric dipole embedded in each one. Apply an electric field and all the balls rotate black side up; opposite field and they rotate white side up. Here the big problem was making billions of tiny two-color spheres with dipole at known orientation at a reasonable cost. Quite a challenge!
I think the E-ink technology has white spheres suspended in a fancy dark liquid (maybe thixotropic?). Apply a field and they come to the surface. Here the challenge is engineering the liquid.
It may be that one technology is better for getting gray levels. I have a vague impression that the E-ink retains the image when the power is shut off; I don't know if Xerox's version does, but the Xerox version might respond faster & be better for motion. In any case, we're gonna see two different technologies battle for the marketplace and find the niches where they work better.
P.S.: I hope you find this Anonymous Coward posting helpful!
Yeah, well a cheap joke is still a joke.
Finally we'll really get a paperless office. It will be cool when you can take your 2 year old 700 code print out and put it in the IN tray of your printer instead of the blue recycle bin.
I am glad xerox may finally make money off of an
invention after they let all the those great
inventions slip through their fingers.
How about clothes which display zooming fractals and psychedelic cellular automata. With some sort of sensors attached I could become a chameleon.
Different base technology.
This was invented by a PARC researcher (Nick Briggs, I think) about 20 years ago, patented, patents licensed to the Japanese (Canon), ignored, resurrected around 1990. Folks at Xerox have been trying to make it work somewhat in earnest since then (not the "four years" mentioned in the article).
Not clear it works any better than the JC Penney demo that EInk did - neither one is even close to being a "book".
It's Nick Sheridon. Nick Briggs is indeed a
researcher at PARC, but Nick Sheridon (also a
PARC researcher) is the father of Electric Paper.
I wonder if they are going to make electronic rolling paper as well? I've been looking for something exotic to roll my weed in for awhile now. This looks like it might be what I've been desiring. ;)-=-~~~
Gee, you asslicking faggot, that was pretty goddamned observant.
E-size / A1 size table you draw on and it goes into the computer. When is someone gonna opensource Autocad?
Ah, yes. Of course. And, uh, this iron-powder and magnet tablet... that can receive information in the form of radio signals and render that information at around 150 DPI?
One might as well have said about Babbage's Engines, "Oh, that's not anything significant; I have an abacus back at the house."
Can electronic toilet paper be far behind?
While this is certainly a while off - I can just imagine that PDA's cold become a lot more useful. Imagine folding out the screen on your pda to A4 size. Slashdot on a page - with updates. A constant source of news. Being able to take notes in the margin of online manuals while commuting.
Rikard
[Science] is one of the very few things that raises human life a little above farce and gives it the grace of tragedy.
Posted by The Devout Capitalist:
This article may signify a break into new technology. Years of novels and concept articles discuss the economics of new news service, payment tracking, and other ventures waiting just shy of a business plan. When the units start to ship in sample quantities, another threashold will pass.
Silicon Valley depends on passing these marks to create new high mark-up products, and the old WIMP (Windows Interface Mouse Pointer) PC is running out of margin. What other technoligies are about to hit?
Posted by Ungrounded Lightning Rod:
So the toner particles have a charge and are
rotated by an electric field, to show the white
or the black side.
Imagine using this above the 48th parallel
in winter - when in an unhumidifed room
you can draw a quarter-inch arc from your
finger to any handy piece of metal after
walking across a rug or standing up from
an upholstered chair.
The black (or white) lines twisting
across the page from the point where you
picked it up should be quite pretty.
Posted by Ungrounded Lightning Rod:
So the toner particles have a charge and are
rotated by an electric field, to show the white
or the black side.
Imagine using this above the 48th parallel in
winter - when in an unhumidifed room you can
draw a quarter-inch arc from your finger to
any handy piece of metal after walking across
a rug or standing up from an upholstered chair.
The black (or white) lines twisting across the
page from the point where you picked it up
should be quite pretty.
This "electronic paper" is not the same stuff as the "digital ink" and "e-ink" that has been talked about for a few years. This is a non-interactive technology, and has nothing really to do with computers per se.
Its basically rewritable paper. You can "print" an image onto it with a machine like a printer that can change the orientation of the ink "bubbles". The idea behind it is feeding it like normal paper through the "electronic paper printer". Then if you want to erase it or write over it, just send it through the printer again.
Personally I don't see the use for it. Paper is cheap, you can't accidently wipe it out, and its awfully hard for someone to change what's on it. I'd be worried about someone noterizing something printed on the stuff and having someone else able to change it after that point.
I think the electronic ink systems that are being worked on by a couple of companies in the Boston area (and I'm sure others) that use an electronic ink on a bit-addressable paper-like surface to be able to dynamically alter the content of the page like in an electronic book is far more useful, if not at the very least for power consumtion. (ie, once the image on the page is changed to the next page, you don't need any more power to keep it there)
I'm sure the PARC development can be used that way too, but from other things I've read on it, that's not Xerox's intent with it or 3M's.
From the article: "Currently we are working on manufacturing and volume," said Bob Sprague, manager of Xerox PARC's Document Hardware Lab. "It won't be on the market in the next year."
From Hemos's post: "They're expecting about a year of figuring out the best process and such, but look for it in on the market early next year. Excellent."
Not only does that conflict with the article (the article makes me think it won't be on the market for June 99 - June 2000 for sure and probably much later) but Hemos's statement that "it will be on the markey early next year" (which makes me think January 2000) conflicts with his estimate of "they're expecting about a year to figure out..." which makes me think it'll be out June 2000 or soon thereafter.
Also, I noticed quite a few posts claiming this technology was stolen - in the article it discusses the technology developed ten years ago at Xerox this is based on.
<joke>What I heard was that they sold a bunch, but then went out of business when nobody needed more for another 20 years...</joke>
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
> Maybe we should organize a field trip to go
> through their "that will never work" idea room.
> I'm sure we could find a use for some of the
> stuff in there.
Hey, it worked for Steve Jobs.
*grins*
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DNA just wants to be free...
Online, yet traditional, newspapers of any kind would be nice though. It'd completely revolutionise the newspaper industry, although people would be less inclined to leave their newspapers about.
BTW, love that sig - just compiled it.
They were working on this 5-10 years ago, but decided it wasn't worth pursuing so they killed the project. Something (maybe the hype from the other 'digital paper') changed their mind, and they ressurected it. So while they could have been years ahead of their potential competitors, now they're two years behind. Way to go, Xerox!
This isn't the first time Xerox had the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread(tm) sitting in their labs and decided it wasn't worth anything. They must have a higher quotient of PHB's than normal.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's probably Y2K compliant, but I'm sure the real question on everyone's minds here is DOES IT RUN LINUX? :-)
Cheers,
Vic
Big catch is, as it's magnetic based, it uses iron as an "toner" stlye media. The downside of that is it'd be only black and white for a while, and 220 dpi isn't really that great (and won't get you nicely varied greys either).
Still, I'm going to mentally file this under "If we can dream it, we can build it" and dig it out in a few years time.
I really like the idea of having ~zero thickness addressable media. Throw away your CRT (or even LCD) based monitor. Now your PC talks to the walls. Moving house would be a bit annoying though. (I have to paint/paper the wall before I can get the computer working again. No email for weeks (months, given me organisational skills) Playing Need For Speed/Quake etc on the bedroom wall seems like a worthwhile goal.....
... and today's pet project has
well, I'm sure one could use a special "pen" on it as well, becasue of how the balls are moved.
Lea
disclaimer: I work for Xerox-PARC (as an intern)
oh, the researchers understand what they have, and did back in the days of the Alto... it's just that Xerox headquarters didn't market it -- not that they can really be blamed... it takes a lot of vision to go for that stuff, especially then, and when it would have been so ridiculously expensive...
researchers there do think about applications of their stuff to the real world, but they can also look beyond that to what comes next.
Lea
disclaimer: I work at Xerox-PARC (as an intern)
that was actually the first thing I thought when I saw it :)
becasue of the nature of the technology, it can't ever be full color, but I think that a BW (or Red and Blue or somehting) display could be nice
it's not instant, however, since it's a mechanical system... that could limit the refresh rate quite signifigantly
Lea
disclaimer: I work at Xerox-PARC (as an intern)
well, I signed an NDA, and I don't know much anyways. I personally am working on modular reconfigurable robotics, which is fun. there are a lot of awfully cool things here, and I'd be happy to buy them if they come to market :)
Lea
I recently read a newspaper article about this, which stated that E Ink can currently do two-colour combinations.
The mechanism was explained via analogy:
Think of a clear beach ball filled with coloured liquid and ping-pong balls of some other colour.
View this beach ball from above.
When the ping pong balls are floating oat the top, the beach ball appears to be the colour of said ping pong balls.
Toggle the density of the ping pong balls, making them sink to the bottom, and the colour of the beach ball appears to change.
The creators of E Ink expect it to drastically reduce to use of paper....
Somehow, I think that they're missing part of the point to hardcopy....
-rozzin.
I want a piece of this stuff with wireless internet access that can display the latest /. stories on my newspaper!
This is one of the thoughts that comes to mind, of course. If electronic paper replaces paper, the paranoid in me asks, what stops the "1984" scenario of altering history by altering its recording?
Mind you, this is a big if.
However, I've recently been dealing with my ISP, whose service agreement is on the web. I had a dispute with them over the blocking of port 80 (mandatory web proxy use). In their agreement (on-line) as I accepted it, there was to be no port blocking. Of course, when I revisited the URL, this had, in fact, been changed.
(Yes, I did have a printed hardcopy of this. But that's pretty much the point, isn't it?)
(The proxy issue was easy enough to deal with. Squid and IPChains are a formidible combination)
--
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
Well, if such barriers were torn down, this would certainly be a wonderful use of electronic paper. Sitting on the train heading to work, unroll your Palm XX, download your palm's email and head over to Slashdot to get your daily fix. Mmm, I'm lovink this already.
An article in New Scientist may elucidate! See:e .html
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990515/papergoes
It has quite a good definition on the subject and talks about the relationships between the main protagonists too!
Buzz Lightyear
You can find information about how PARC's epaper works and some of the applications envisioned for it on PARC's web site on this page. More traditional display applications are very much being considered, in addition to the ideas about novel, more paper-like uses.
The beads are "a little bit bigger than toner particles". What I wonder is-- is it just black and white, or do they do color? Can they be written with a mesh embedded in the paper (ala core memory), or does the paper need to be fed past a write head? (If so, what's the advantage over paper & ink?)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In Sci Am last year they were discussing this technology. The limit is flexible TFT hardware and how small it can be made. The proof-of-concept sheet that they were talking about was a sheet of vinyl with a faceplate from a dead notebook to handle the electricals. They had good results as to performance but poor contrast due to power constraints.
This thought is not original with me, but I don't recall the source. Xerox formed PARC with the idea that it would help them make money. They realized that directed reseach may produce incremental improvements but not breakthroughs, so they let researchers do what they wanted (within reason). Most of PARC's research was worthless to Xerox, as Xerox did not want to risk significant amounts of money in unproven markets. The laser printer that PARC developed, however, more than paid for the cost of PARC.
Oh, great, now not only will my office be littered with Post-It notes, but now when I do find the one I want, it will have changed on my anyway!
Seriously though, from what I've seen, this stuff needs something like a magnetic plate to flip the pixels, so the concept of sticking it to a surface and pulling it off again isn't that far fetched. I imagine a device doctored to look like a hardcover book would work quite well. (I'd buy it.) I imagine to start with though they'll push printers for the stuff and the paper'll be like 20 lb stock. Oh well, baby steps.
Still, 0 glare on my Palm Pilot in direct sunlight would be spiff. Even if it stayed the same size.
Closer and closer to what I would really like to have: a flat, paper-size web client, with wireless, high-speed internet access. (Running Linux, of course).
Some combination of this "electronic paper" and a touch-screen could very easily replace some computers. It definitely wouldn't work for programming, but it would be really useful where 100 lbs. of paper copies are generally required.
> DOES IT RUN LINUX?
Dude, can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these things? I tried, but the sheer profoundness of it nearly destroyed my brain. It was like in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when Hunter Thompson drinks the whole vial of liquified human pituitary gland. IT WAS THAT AMAZING.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
about a year ago it was either popular mechanics or popular science that had an article on this subject, talked about 'digital ink', etc. if it was in popular mechanics, you could prob find it at their web site pmzone. If it was in pop sci, then your guess is as good as mine as to where to find it.
This sounds a bit shady.
Does anyone remember last year when e-paper started in the media? The process we have already heard about, it was suposedly developed by a Kid at MIT, who now is involved with the E-Ink company, WHO ARE ALREADY SELLING IT! There was a slashdot article awhile back that linked to the publicity anouncement.
So, the question is, is Xerox trying to steal the e-paper industry from E-Ink? If they have been working on this stuff, why didn't we hear from them when e-paper was last getting a big hype-push?
I am suspicious, but thats just me.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
So what if it's not e-ink? E-ink isn't any better for notarized documents. The key here is that while some use of paper is permanent (records, legal documents, etc..) a LOT of it is transient.
This is true in most business environments today. Most premanent records these days are stored electronically. It's stuff like agendas, faxed plane ticket confirmations, meeting presentations, etc... In my personal case, it's a lot of stuff I printed for use where my laptop is inconvenient (which is pretty often).
I've seen people kill a whole ream of paper printing presentations for a small meeting where everyone just chucks them afterwards. Better to chuck them into a "reuse" bin. It's a way of getting to that "paperless" office without having to kick people from their paper addiction. Even with the reuse, it will probably be years before this stuff is justifiable on a purely financial basis, but it would save a lot of trees. I'm betting e-ink will always be too expensive for this sort of use.
Another possible benefit is security. If I understand how these things are designed, it would be impossible to read them after they're erased, unlike most magnetic media which is really hard to completely wipe clean. Shredding paper is less than ideal... the strip-style shredders will protect against casual evesdropping, but not from someone who's determined (and patient).
I seem to remember it is about 220dpi ...
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Play Six Pack Man. I
For a more detailed article, take a look at the september 1998 Scientific American in the "Technology in Business" section. They mention the resolution (which i seem to remember as 220dpi but don't quote me on that.
I remeber reading about this when the article was in scientific american, and it's neat to see that they are actually going to try to produce this (i'm so sick of seeing cool geek technology shelved by companies). Hopefully they won't sell it with a restrictive OEM only contract, so i can actually get my hands on some (unlike the very small hard drives made by another technology giant who shall remain nameless)
An unrelated question for you all: Remeber the flexible, plastic, non-metallic batteries that were mentioned in scientific american a while ago? The ones that were not being produced because they might be useful for terrorists or some other stupid brain-dead technophobe reason... Do you know if they ever came into existance?
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Play Six Pack Man. I
My children refer to my PalmPilot as "Daddy's MagnaDoodle"!
I think Tyco (I think) and 3Com are missing a bet here...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Janitors at PARC have just announced electronic toilet paper. The revelation of the new electronic TP has shocked the executive staff, on whom the janitorial staff experimented by stocking the executive washroom with prototype rolls of their new invention. A spokesperson for the group revealed that they have now begun working on a digital product that could be deeply embedded, and hope to be through the experimentation stage soon.
Changes aren't permanent, but change is.
Leah,
So what is the PARC working on now?
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
It's amazing how Xerox PARC technology keeps trickling out there. What a different world this would be if they had understood what they had.
And is it just me, or are you reminded of the "smart" paper in Diamond Age?
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Crude, but the essential design is the same--moving trapped particles of ink around.
- - -
Apple didn't steal ideas from Xerox if that's what you're implying. What's up with that story.. it's so played out it qualifies as an urban legend. For the real story read the article from About.com:= home
http://macos.a bout.com/library/weekly/mcurrent.htm?pid=2801&cob
or these articles:
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_ horn1.html
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_ raskin.html
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I think there will be a way to notarize this somehow: that is no reason to say that e paper will be useless!! There will always be forgers and criminals, whatever technology you make, but that should never be a reason to do away with new technologies.
What e-paper *can* do on the other hand, is stop us from producing so many great amounts of newspapers every day, that are going to be obsolete that same afternoon. And magazines that aren't completely biodegradable because of their plastic content will also stop having to be made from our already poor resources. Maybe this new e-paper thing can make the whole world a little greener.
I don't thing the cost should be such an issue. Paper is cheap because you can only use it once, but with epaper you can probably go on for months!
One thing I'd like to know: is e-paper made from biodegradable components? What effect will it's mass introduction have on the ecology? Can it be recycled? I hope the people who are creating it are asking themselves those questions.
Ale
Now if only they had some half decent handwriting recognition software it may be usefull... I don't know anyone who wants to use a computer to see handwriting.
I can type FAR faster then I can write, maybe it's just me but other then the "wow thats neato!" factor I don't see much of a point to it.
Wow!!! Etch-a-Sketch for the new millenium. Is it Y2K compliant?
This "electronic paper" sounds like a thin magna-doodle to me!
... nah ...
That looks pretty darned nifty.
Does anyone know anything about the portable computing implications? Like a really big, thin, flexible Palm Pilot? Now, _that_ would be sexy.
-awc
For that matter, I remember reading in high school about a new type of lightbulb that could burn for up to like 20 years (as opposed to ~1000 hours for a plain old incandescent bulb). It was based on some kind of radio transmitter (instead of a filament) that would illuminate the inside of a bulb. Does anyone out there remember &/or know anything about this? I've talked to others that remember this, it has to exist somewhere. Did G.E. or Sylvania buy out & suppress this idea or what?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Xerox PARC's project page has their press release and more info:
m ages/matt2.jpg
http://www.parc.xerox.com/dhl/projects/epaper/
There is a picture here of someone apparently writing on the e-paper with some kind of stylus. (You can see a wire running out of the back):
http://www.parc.xerox.com/dhl/projects/epaper/i
Implies that it can handle input & output.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Has anybody seen any indication of how many dots-per-inch this technology or other digital ink technologies are? I've never seen mention of this rather relevant fact.
There is already a lot out there on the web about this subject. The. html) is 0 28.html). s 1.html ) and also a b son.html) developed by y /19457.html) recently.
electronic paper they're talking about (described, by the way, at
comdex, http://daily.zdevents.com/comdex/fall98/thurs/ts2
based on Xerox's 'Gyricon' electronic ink system, which they've been
researching for quite a while now. There's an article about it in
Wired (http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/16
There are descriptions of Gyricon on the web, including the 98
Scientific American article
(http://www.sciam.com/1998/0998issue/0998techbu
set of slides with illustrations for the talk 'Observations on Reading
and Publishing in the Electronic Age'
(http://www.gr.osf.org/i-commerce/) that describe Gyricon. Gyricon is
not the technology (The Last Book -
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/363/jaco
the MIT Media lab. The Media lab technology was spun off into a
private company, E Ink Corporation (http://www.eink.com/) that has all
kinds of press releases describing what they've been up to lately.
They seem to be mostly focusing on signage right now, and have even
done some big public demos
(http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/stor
FWIW, I think it only really makes sense as an output medium...not for input--pen tablets seem to be plenty good enough thus far (or just plain old-fashioned paper).
ufdraco
Goody, digital paper... Thats nice I suppose, but I think Digital Wallpaper would be MUCH better. You could easly but the hurts on paint and reagular wallpaper companies.... Now I can change the color of my room with just a click of a button... Put up any pattern I wanted... Those nice pictures of Pam Anderson. :P /. on my walls... That would truly rule....
:)
:P
Have
Digital Bilboards, yet another great idea..... Have differnet ads running all day and night.... Have news updates, etc....
Ah the joys of it all...
Now, they just have to make it REALLY cheep and really good quality/picture quality.
I can dream can't I?
Blah.
Does this mean I don't have to give up my
trusty, well worn, dog-eared, mangled tab,
scuffed up leather bound Day Runner now?
Geeze I hope so, because if I can't convince
myself to shell out the 3 bills for a palm
I doubt I can convince the boss to either.
(The 19" flat screen hard enough)