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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.
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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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