Xerox PARC engineers -- the wizards who gave us the laser printer, networking, and the modern personal computer -- have done it again.
They're working on "electric paper," a fabric-like material that can display digital text. The "paper" is flexible. It uses far less power than a laptop display. It can achieve resolutions as good as a laser printer. Perhaps most important, it can eventually be made for US$1 a page -- a minuscule fraction of what it costs to make an LCD display.
Xerox (XRX) is tight-lipped about possible products. But use your imagination: wallpaper that changes patterns at a decorator's whim; billboards that change ads for weekday and weekend commuters; radio-controlled grocery store shelf tags for diaper happy hours; or "electric newsprint" that wirelessly downloads the hourly editions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Xerox PARC -- short for Palo Alto Research Center -- calls the technology "Gyricon." A Gyricon display consists of millions of microscopic, charged balls painted half-black, half-white. The balls float in tiny liquid-filled cavities and rotate in response to an electrical field. Just like ink dots on laser-printed paper, swaths of these balls can form patterns, characters, and pictures. But unlike ink, the balls can be rearranged again and again.
But first, Xerox has to get the technology out of the lab. For Xerox, this could be a challenge.
Many times in its 28-year history, Xerox PARC has created absurdly wonderful technologies, only to watch companies like Apple Computer, 3Com, and Adobe Systems walk away with them to make sellable products. Once again, the research lab has an amazing invention on hand, and once again, commercial upstarts are threatening to beat it to market.
