SmartPaper

When personal computers were in their infancy, Nick Sheridon, a physicist at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), began researching alternatives to computer display screens, which at the time were plagued by poor viewing quality and constant flickering. His goal was to create a solution that would not only have the benefits of paper but could improve upon its qualities. Since images on paper are essentially series of bitmaps or dots, Sheridon conceived of having electrically activated micro-spheres that could emulate these bitmaps. These “beads” were black on one side and white on the other and encapsulated within pockets of oil on a sheet of transparent elastomer. Depending on the electrical field produced, be it positive or negative, the orientation of these beads would change showing either black or white and collectively would create images. In fact, the images were almost as clear as ink on a sheet of paper, but eminently more useful as the page could be changed at will. Gyricon SmartPaper™ was born.

SmartPaper vs. Paper

SmartPaper™ is reusable display material that has many of the properties of traditional paper:

• Stores/displays an image
• Can be viewed in reflective light
• Has a wide viewing angle
• Flexible
• Relatively inexpensive

Unlike regular paper, however, it is electrically writeable and erasable.