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Today’s climate of progress for the sake
of progress can be a little tiring.

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It’s easy for one to get cynical browsing
Kickstarter.

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What I’d give to be a fly on the wall, and
observe the brainstorms that I imagine went

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a little something like this:

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Ya know, innovation in teapots has really
stagnated.

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I really wish my teapot were able to gauge
my emotional state

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to improve my tea-drinking experience.

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I haven’t seen anything new in the personal
hydration market; everybody’s already got

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a nice canteen of some sort.

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I know!

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Let’s put a solar panel on a water bottle
and put bluetooth in it, connect it with your

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phone, and have it tell you when you should
drink from it, because we all know that our

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bodies lack the biological processes necessary
to signal that we need to drink fluids.

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But one of those brainstorms did in fact bring
a popular item to market.

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What did that brainstorm look like?

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“What if we could have books….

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without the book?”

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And thus, the e-reader was born.

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Now, in this video I’m not going to be talking
about e-readers themselves…

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OK I’ll be talking a little bit about them
but the main focus and attraction of today’s

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technological exploration is the display technology
behind the world’s most popular e-readers.

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That would be electronic paper, or e-paper,
or e-ink, or…

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electronic ink.

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E-readers had existed in some form long before
e-paper appeared, in fact Techmoan made an

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excellent video on the Sony Data Discman from
1990 which you should totally watch, but they

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weren’t exactly a great experience.

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LCDs had weird viewing angles and were hard
to see, battery life wasn’t great, and storage,

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being the 1990’s, was limited and relied
on some sort of physical media anyway.

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Might as well just have a book.

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But the development of e-ink fixed the battery
life and display problems, and by the time

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it became viable, flash storage was cheap
enough that books could be stored permanently

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on the device.

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And remember, these are books we’re talking
about, so what’s being stored is mainly

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text and maybe some pictures.

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You could fit dozens of books in just 64 megabytes.

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Now, let me introduce you to the device which
introduced me to the word of e-ink.

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This is a Sony PRS-505, the second model of
Sony Reader available for sale in the US.

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I first saw one of these on display at my
local Borders.

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That’s the second failed enterprise in as
many sentences.

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Anyway, when I saw this I thought the display
was fake.

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One of those silly demonstration units with
a cardboard cutout for a screen.

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But when I pressed the page turn button and
this happened, I was taken aback.

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There’s no way that screen can be real!

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Well, it was, and this one is.

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Now if you’re familiar with e-ink, which
I imagine most of you are by now, this is

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no big deal.

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But back in 2006 when the Sony Reader
was first launched, this was like magic.

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A digital display of any sort which looked
like paper was mind boggling.

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The viewing angles are perfect, just like
paper.

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Bring it outside, and it’s as if you’re
reading an actual paper book.

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Even in direct sunlight, the display is perfectly
easy to read.

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Just like paper.

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Now the contrast wasn’t remarkably good,
about as good as a newspaper, but if you’re

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reading text that's perfectly fine.

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And the fact the the screens were greyscale
didn’t really matter, because

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you’re reading text.

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Mostly.

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Certainly the display technology wasn’t
perfect, but because it looked and behaved

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as if it were a sheet of paper, it was readable
in any conditions a book is, and it didn’t

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come with the eyestrain problems of a backlit
display.

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So what makes it so different?

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Well, practically everything about it.

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The liquid crystal display was very mature
by the time e-ink rolled around, but it relied

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on properties of light to make it function
that lead to all sorts of problems.

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Every LCD needs to polarize light in order
to work.

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The basic theory behind LCD technology is
that two perpendicularly opposed polarizing

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filters will block light from passing through
them.

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Between the filters is a liquid crystal that
essentially twists light and allows the incorrectly

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polarized light to pass through by re-aligning
it with the front polarizing filter.

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But, when the crystal experiences a voltage
passing through it, it aligns in such a way

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that the light will no longer be twisted,
and thus will be blocked from passing through.

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It’s some pretty neat stuff, I’ll admit,
but the polarization as light passes through

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it results in viewing angle limitations.

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Non-backlit displays like the one in this
watch have excellent contrast and viewability,

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but only under certain conditions.

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Depending on the angle of the light hitting
it, it might suddenly become very dark and muddy.

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You really want the light source to be above
you or behind you, because it needs to pass

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through the display and be reflected straight
back for best results.

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If you’re not looking at the display pretty
much head-on, the polarization effect is weakened,

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and the contrast is drastically reduced.

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This is what makes devices like the Game Boy
Color so annoying to use.

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You need to find some way to get comfortable,
but also have the light be behind you, or

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else you’ll be holding it at a weird angle
the whole time you use it.

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Which of course was what usually happened.

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Giving the display a backlight fixes most
of these problems--though let’s not forget

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the dark days of pre-IPS panel crappy viewing
angles-- but introduces new problems.

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Most displays these days, regardless of technology,
are made to appear black when they’re not on.

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This allows for contrast to exist between
light and dark areas

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even in moderate ambient lighting.

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But when you take this display outside, now
there’s so much ambient light that the

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display is hard to read.

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You can combat this with an even brighter
backlight, but now you’re using a lot of

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energy, which isn’t great for portable devices.

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And no matter what you do, a glowing display
in your face is likely to result in some eyestrain.

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In a nutshell, LCDs manipulate how light passes
through them, and light has to pass through

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the polarizing filters in order to be manipulated.

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But what if we could produce a display that
doesn’t require light to go through it at all.

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Let’s think for a moment what makes up a
printed piece of paper.

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The paper is white, and when light lands on
it it isn’t reflected back in just one direction

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like a mirror, or narrowly like in an LCD.

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Diffuse reflection causes it to be reflected
in pretty much every direction.

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That’s how we see normal objects.

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It doesn’t really matter what angle we’re
looking at it from, or what angle the illumination

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source is coming from, because the light that
hits it is scattered in all directions.

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To put text on paper, a pigment is added
which will absorb light and prevent it from

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being reflected as intensely, or change the
proportions of the wavelengths that get reflected,

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imparting what we see as color.

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So how could you go about making a display
that emulates the appearance of paper?

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It needs to be diffusely reflective, in order
to look like paper, and it also needs to be

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able to darken parts in order to form
images.

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Well, e-ink displays are made up of tiny microcapsules
that are filled with a mixture of black oil

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and white pigment.

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And in a way, each of these particles functions
like a teeny tiny Etch A Sketch.

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See, the insides of an Etch A Sketch are black,
and it’s filled with aluminum powder.

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When it’s shaken, the powder is thrown around
with the help of polystyrene beads and coats

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the glass, making a uniformly silver screen.

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The dials control the two axes of a plotter,
and as it moves, it scrapes the aluminum off

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of the glass, exposing the dark insides of
the toy.

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If you’re really patient you can scrape
off enough of the screen to see the actual

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mechanism inside.

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The tiny particles in an e-ink display are
quite similar in concept.

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Inside them is a black oily substance, with
a bit of negatively charged titanium dioxide

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powder suspended in it.

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If a positive charge is produced, this will
attract the white titanium dioxide toward

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it and cause it to bunch up against the inside
surface of the microcapsule.

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The result is that it appears in front of
the black oil, and the microcapsule appears white.

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If you reverse the charge, now the titanium
dioxide particles will be pushed away and

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end up on the opposite side of the microcapsule,
revealing the black oil and thus the microcapsule

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appears black.

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Later screens use positively charged black
particles as well, which although I can’t

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find the specific reason for doing so, likely
increases contrast.

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By sandwiching a bunch of these microcapsules
between two electrodes, you can choose to

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make them appear either black or white depending
on the polarity of the charge you produce.

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So, taking it a step further, if you take
a great big bunch of these microcapsules,

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and sandwich them between an active matrix
of electrodes, you can produce a screen with

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given size and resolution.

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So long as the electrodes on the display side
are transparent, you’ll be able to see the

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microcapsules underneath.

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And that’s exactly how most e-ink displays
work.

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The technology itself is referred to as an
electrophoretic display.

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The concept of electrophoresis was well known
before e-ink became viable, but the invention

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of the microencapsulated electrophoretic display
led to devices like this being viable.

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That really has a nice ring to it, doesn’t
it?

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Microencapsulated electrophoretic display.

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Rolls right off the tongue.

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Perhaps the signature advantage of this display
technology, aside from its paper-like appearance,

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is that the display does not require power
to produce a static image.

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The microcapsules are so small, and the fluid
they’re suspended in is viscous enough,

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that the pigment particles will just stay
where they are indefinitely.

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This is why the battery life of an e-reader
is so great.

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Unless it’s actively changing what’s on
the screen,

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it can essentially just turn itself off.

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Assuming the software was written this way,
the hardware can be barely awake,

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just enough to register button presses.

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Then it can wake
up, refresh the screen, and go back to sleep

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until the next page turn is requested.

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Sony used to quote battery life of these by
the number of page turns possible.

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In the case of this unit, that was 6,800 turns.

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So in theory, you could read a dozen or so
books on one charge, depending on the size

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of the text you selected.

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And if I may, I’d like to digress slightly
and admire the design of this unit.

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While buttons on things seem to have gone
the way of the dodo, I really liked the aesthetic

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of this device, and the navigational hierarchy
was clever.

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And here’s a neat thing--it’s got expandable
storage, and

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--get this--

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a headphone jack!

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That’s right, it’s an e-reader that has
a headphone jack, so you can listen to MP3s

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while you read.

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What a strange world we were in back in 2007.

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Putting headphone jacks in things.

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I had a blue one, which I preferred to the
silver, and while I am admittedly biased here,

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I think the design has aged pretty well.

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And, in case you’ve forgotten, this is what
the first Amazon Kindle looked like.

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Ugh, that sure was something, wasn’t it?

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One of the side-effects of the microcapsules
that make up the display is a sort of natural

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smoothing.

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While this display is definitely made up of
pixels, in fact it has a rather measly resolution

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of only 800X600, each pixel contains many
microcapsules, and thus the edges of the pixels

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are incidentally smoothed.

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You can definitely see them, I’m not claiming
they’re not visible, but this helps to make

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the text seem even more natural.

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Thanks to a rather well-thought-out text rendering
scheme, and the ability to show 8 shades of grey

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(actually, what’s to stop the display
from showing 50 shades of grey, amirite?)

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[Maniacal Laughter]

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the edges of the text rarely seems
jagged, which helps maintain the illusion

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that this is printed text on paper.

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Anywho while the screen requires no power
to show a static image, you have probably

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noticed the weird flashing thing it does every
time you change the page.

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And you might have also noticed how slow it
is to draw any given image.

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Well, now we get to the downsides of epaper.

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Because it relies on particles physically
moving within a viscous fluid,

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it’s not fast.

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At all.

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This doesn’t really matter for anything
an e-reader might do, but for an application

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like a general purpose display, it’s simply
too slow to be useful.

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Applied Science did some experimentation on
these displays, and I highly encourage checking

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the video out, but with current electrophoretic
display technology, it’s unlikely that we

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could break into anything near smooth motion.

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The reason why this device keeps inverting
the display is to avoid permanently charging

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any part of the screen, and thus winding up
with a permanent ghost image.

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It also needs to do this to prevent ghosting
in general.

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Because the particles aren’t all going to
move uniformly, you can still see a very slight

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remnant of whatever it showed before, and
without doing that inverted flash, it would

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be even more noticeable.

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Newer e-readers don’t do this with every
page turn, however even in 2007 Sony wasn’t

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doing whole-screen refreshes for everything.

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The little loading animation only moves the
arrows within the circle, so it’s clear

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that even this early on it was possible to
refresh only portions of the screen.

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This macro-shot reveals that the the process
of producing intermediate shades of grey appears

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to be based mainly on time.

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If we slow down and look frame by frame, you
can see many of the pixels briefly turn a

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darker shade, then lighten slightly.

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It could be that this single frame of brief
darkness is the impulse of the matrix’s

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charge, and the reversion to a lighter color
is simply the microcapsules returning to a

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more relaxed state.

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Or perhaps the screen is briefly pulling those
pixels towards black, and then a bit back

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to white.

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In fact, you can see that any pixels that
are due to change spend at least some time

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as completely black, and completely white.

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They are then pulled backed to their appropriate
darkness levels.

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In any case, we can see clearly here that
the pixels are not all manipulated at the

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same time nor for the same duration.

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And here’s where I get frustrated.

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E-ink development has kinda just sorta stopped.

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It’s not like it’s gone away, but there
have basically only been incremental improvements.

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Sony’s later Reader models, like this PRS-350,
improved on the contrast slightly, and they

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enabled touch support using a rather clever system
of infrared emitters and receivers embedded

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in the bezels of the device.

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They also tweaked the display algorithm to
quickly invert the sections you touch to affirm

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your input.

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Amazon’s PaperWhite kindles incorporate
a backlight (or some built-in lighting anyway,

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I’m not sure of the specifics).

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And screens that can show either red or black
have become rather common.

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In fact you sometimes see these in stores
in lieu of price tags.

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Supposedly E-Ink Holdings has developed a
full-color display, but I’m not aware of

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any applications of it.

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And that’s a real shame.

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While I’m sure the inherent speed problems
of electrophoretic technology will probably

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prevent it from ever breaking out of e-readers,
I would love to have a computer monitor with

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the physical appearance of paper.

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I wouldn’t even mind if it were greyscale.

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I spend a lot of time in front of very bright,
colorful computer screens, and I definitely

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get eyestrain from them.

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And although I use f.lux, a program that blocks
blue light late in the evening, I still feel

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that the brightness alone helps keep me awake.

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I really only need that color and brightness
for a small portion of my work.

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If I could use an e-ink monitor for browsing
the web, writing, researching, and doing other

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computery things, my eyes would really appreciate
it.

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And wouldn’t ya know it, there’s another
display technology that might spread out using

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the principle of electrowetting.

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Supposedly these refresh fast enough to be
suitable for video, while also having a similar

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appearance to e-paper.

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I say, let’s get on this display companies!

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You will gladly have my money if you come
up with a paper-like display, it doesn’t

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even need to be full-color but if you like
I’ll pay extra for it, that I can connect

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to my PC and use as a monitor.

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I would love, love, love it if I could be
starting at a matte, paper-like screen, and

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not an eye-abusing glowing rectangle.

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From what it looks like, an electrowetting
display could in theory also be backlit, so

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perhaps you could make what looks like paper
when you want it to, but looks like a video

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screen when you don’t.

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Or even just, like, here.

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Laptop people.

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I see you doing you funky stuff that no one
asks for.

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How about a laptop with an LCD panel that
happens to also have an e-paper panel on the

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other side, and you can just flip it around
and switch to e-ink.

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I would bet you could boast some colossal
battery life figures if you can figure out

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how to pull this off without a backlight.

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Here’s just a free idea coming at you.

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Figure it out, please.

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Regardless of my desire for a general purpose
e-ink display, I’ll still happily gaze at

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my e-readers, marvel at the beauty of their
design, and grumble about their limited applications.

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By the way, did you notice the connection
here?

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Sony comes to market with a product a year
before a competitor releases a very similar

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00:16:01,600 --> 00:16:04,860
product, and despite Sony's best efforts,
their product failed?

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00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:07,480
Where have I heard that one before?

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As always, thanks for watching, and I hope
you enjoyed the video!

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I’m hoping we see more applications for
e-ink, even if it’s not my pipe dream of

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a truly functional computer monitor.

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Displays have been glowing in our faces for
decades and perhaps a change in that regard

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is worth a look.

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00:16:23,550 --> 00:16:27,540
Of course, thank you to everyone who supports
this channel on Patreon, especially the fine

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00:16:27,540 --> 00:16:29,850
folks you see scrolling up your screen.

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00:16:29,850 --> 00:16:33,940
Your support has enabled some truly amazing
things, and you all deserve my thanks.

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00:16:33,940 --> 00:16:37,050
If you’d like to support the channel with
a pledge of your own and get perks like early

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00:16:37,050 --> 00:16:41,370
video access, behind-the-scenes videos, and
the insides scoop on the latest projects,

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00:16:41,370 --> 00:16:43,260
please check out my Patreon page.

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00:16:43,260 --> 00:16:45,780
Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll
see you next time!

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♫ unfathomably smooth jazz ♫

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...but, when I pressed the page turn button
and this happened, I was taken aback.

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00:16:56,140 --> 00:16:57,780
There's (watch beeps) no way…

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00:16:59,440 --> 00:17:02,880
I forgot I'm wearing the watch that beeps
on the hour.

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00:17:02,880 --> 00:17:04,000
Those microcaped…

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00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:06,100
(various unintelligible
mouth noises of frustration and anger)

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00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:09,640
♪ Let's take a look at the camera ♪

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00:17:10,660 --> 00:17:13,560
Now the contrast wasn't -- oh yeah I was gonna…
(clears throat)

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00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:18,680
Inside them is a black oily substance with
a bit of negatively charged titanium dioxide

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00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:20,120
suspended in it.

299
00:17:20,120 --> 00:17:22,760
Titanium dioxide powder suspended in it.

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00:17:22,760 --> 00:17:25,320
The result is that it appears to be in front
--

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00:17:25,860 --> 00:17:27,420
It is! It doesn't appear to be.

302
00:17:27,420 --> 00:17:30,090
You stop messing with what you wrote, you
silly person!

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00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:32,480
Then it can wake up….

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00:17:32,490 --> 00:17:34,039
I didn't plan for this