From Princeton to the World: The Devlopement of LCD Displays

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David Sarnoff Library Lecture

    From Princeton to Japan to the World:
	The Development Of Thin, Flat LCD Displays For TVs, Computers

	Dr. Hiro Kawamoto

Thursday, August 8, at 8 p.m. the Sarnoff auditorium

Free and open to the public; refreshments will be served.
The David Sarnoff Library's exhibits will also be open.

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July 22, 2002

PRESS RELEASE:
For immediate release

Talk Will Trace Development Of Thin, Flat LCD Displays
For TVs, Computers From Princeton to Japan to the World

Free Multimedia Lecture at Sarnoff Corporation on August 8

Dr. Hiro Kawamoto, an authority on liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), will
give a free multimedia lecture on how LCDs moved from their invention at
Princeton's RCA Labs (now Sarnoff Corporation) in the 1960s to Sharp
Corporation's historic flat, wall-hanging, color television of 1988, and
beyond to laptop computers and HDTVs.

The lecture, sponsored by the David Sarnoff Library, will be held on
Thursday, August 8, at 8 p.m. in Sarnoff Corporation's auditorium.  It will
include video clips and demonstrations of the original products that
introduced LCDs to the world.

"In the 1950s David Sarnoff challenged his scientists and engineers to
create a television you could hang on the wall," says Dr. Alexander Magoun,
executive director of the David Sarnoff Library.  "LCDs made that
possible.  But it took nearly forty years for them to migrate from the
laboratory to broad consumer acceptance."

"We are fortunate to have Dr. Kawamoto come from Japan to explain how
scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs around the world competed and
cooperated to make the flat-panel LCD a world standard for displaying
digital images."

The talk is part of a series that began last November with two
presentations on the invention of electronic color television at RCA
Laboratories.  It will continue this fall with events in honor of the 60th
anniversary of the research facility.  The lecture is free and open to the
public; refreshments will be served.  The David Sarnoff Library's exhibits,
including one on the invention of LCDs at the RCA Labs, will also be open.

Directions to Sarnoff are available at www.sarnoff.com under the "Contact"
link.  For more information contact the David Sarnoff Library at
609-734-2636 or amagoun@davidsarnoff.org.

Summary of presentation

Shortly after RCA Laboratories' researchers in Princeton invented
electronic color television in 1950, RCA chief executive David Sarnoff
asked them to put television on a wall.  In 1962, Dr. Richard Williams, a
physical chemist at RCA's David Sarnoff Research Center, discovered the
Williams Domain in liquid crystals, which he realized made the material
suitable for flat-panel displays.  Two years later Dr. George Heilmeier
invented an LCD using his dynamic-scattering mode.  He thought a
wall-sized, flat-panel, color TV was just around the corner.  By 1970, RCA
staff conceived of techniques such as the Twisted-Nematic (TN) mode,
Thin-Film-Transistor (TFT) arrays, and cholesteric doping, which are the
bases of current liquid-crystal industry.  However, RCA decided not to
pursue the commercialization of LCDs.  Project researchers left the labs
and founded LCD companies such as Optel and Microma.

During the 1970s researchers at Hoffmann-La Roche, DRA, and Brown Boveri in
Europe gained insight into the physics of liquid-crystal
behavior.  Chemical companies such as Hoechst, BDH, and Merck developed new
materials for LCD applications.  In Japan Sharp and Seiko supported LCD
technology by designing and supplying small displays for niche market
products such as wristwatches and calculators.

Finally, in 1988, researchers at Sharp developed a 14-inch full-color,
full-motion, liquid-crystal display.  Sharp's accomplishment led IBM,
Toshiba, and NEC to join the liquid-crystal display industry.  David
Sarnoff's dream of a wall-hanging TV had finally become a reality. LCDs
could now serve the markets for computers and television receivers.  Today
LCDs appear in calculators, watches, cameras, laptops, PDAs, airplane seat
displays, computer monitors, and now high-definition televisions.  Sales of
LCDs surpassed those of cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays in 2000 and are
expected to exceed the $50 billion mark by 2005.

About Hiro Kawamoto

Dr. Kawamoto received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970.  For the next
ten years he was a member of the technical staff at RCA's David Sarnoff
Research Center in Princeton, where he received two Outstanding Achievement
Awards.  Between 1980 and 1985, he founded and ran Sony Corporation's
Consumer Electronics Laboratory in Paramus, and the Princeton Community
Japanese Language School.  Between 1985 and 2001 he opened Sharp
Corporation Laboratories in Europe and America.  Dr. Kawamoto is a fellow
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a recipient of
the IEEE Centennial Medal.  He lives in Japan where he owns a consulting
firm, Josephus International.  Dr. Kawamoto's lecture is based on his
article, "The History of Liquid-Crystal Displays" in the April 2002
Proceedings of the IEEE.


About Sarnoff

Sarnoff Corporation (www.sarnoff.com), the former RCA Laboratories and
since 1987 a wholly-owned subsidiary of SRI International, creates
electronic, biomedical and information technology for government and
commercial clients. This includes integrated circuits and imagers; vision
processing software and hardware; computational drug discovery; digital TV
and video; high-performance computing; and wireless communications. The
company also commercializes its technology through licensing and the
creation of new venture companies.

About the David Sarnoff Library

David Sarnoff Library is a trade name registered and used by the David
Sarnoff Collection, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.  It is
devoted to the understanding and celebration of the innovative spirit
personified by Mr. Sarnoff and realized in the accomplishments of those who
worked at RCA, and to its encouragement in future inventors and
entrepreneurs.  The Library is supported by Sarnoff Corporation, which
maintains a facility housing the Collection; by donations and photo sales;
and by an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical
Commission, a division of Cultural Affairs in the Department of State.