When were LCD's invented?

[alanworland]

I bought my first LCD Casio watch in 72, solid stainless case, screw back, waterproof. I was informed at the time that LCDs would fade through direct sunlight so was always aware of extreme sun.
Here we are 45 years later after continuous use still plenty of contrast on the display and keeps time to about a second a month and get about 10 years on a battery!
The early watches were fitted with a trimmer so timekeeping could be fine tuned.
Do they make them like that anymore?

Alan

[paulsherwin]

The display in my graduation present LCD Seiko did fade after about 20 years.

[Karen O]

The Kerr cell is a light modulator that employed an electrostatic field across a horrible liquid (Nitrobenzene). I'm not sure if it uses the same principle as LCDs though.

This pre-dates the Jeffrey cell, which was used in mechanical projection TVs.

[Craig Sawyers]

Originally Posted by Karen O

The Kerr cell is a light modulator that employed an electrostatic field across a horrible liquid (Nitrobenzene). I'm not sure if it uses

It's a long time since the Kerr cell used liquids. They have for a long time used crystalline media like KTN. Still used in laser physics, although more usually the Pockels cell is used as a light modulator or switch.

If you'd like some light bedtime reading https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/393635/1/82032212.pdf

Craig

[hannahs radios]

Well guys thankful so much for all the information I'm impressed how much knowledge is out there! I think its probably fairly safe to assume that my little soldering station was probably made In the early 70 s and the lead is just whatever was to hand it could of been new colors if that what was to hand at the time one thing the lead is very short only about 8 inches long weird or what?.. I was given one of those LCD watches ad a present when I came out of hospital after major surgery in 1979 I still have it its called a Timex living rock watch

[elanman99]

I have Googled until I'm blue in the face but cannot find any reference to a calculator I borrowed for a few days in about 1970 (In fact I think it was earlier than that).

Two things I remember clearly was that it was German (Siemens?) and that the LCD display was hinged or had a hinged cover/shade. The digits were enormous, maybe 15mm high and the calculator although not large was probably a desk rather than hand held type.

Does anyone recall it?

Ian

[Craig Sawyers]

Sometime in the mid 80's I visited Kodak in Germany. At that point the only show in town for making a presentation was the Carousel slide projector - and Kodak had the main global market for the things. They made hundreds of thousands a year, and also had the global market for the slides and technology for making them. Big factories, global infrastructure.

I went out to persuade them that there were technologies coming down the tracks that would cause them significant business problems, that they ought to be investing in developing new products - and we would do that for them in exchange for lots and lots of money. I told them that light valves were where the technology was going, and liquid crystal displays were the best developed example.

Well, this was a message that they did not want to hear. "They are temperature sensitive - the lamp will cook them", well then - use a cold mirror "They will be complex and expensive - you will need a computer to drive them", well why not? "You'll need 3 for colour", well your current technology is single colour, TV's are colour etc etc, yak yak yak

Anyway, they chose not to proceed. And in the end it did not go well for Kodak in that market; they now make zero products in projection technologies. Carousel projectors and carousels go for good money as "vintage"!

Of course, early offerings from their competitors were indeed LCD based, but technology moves on, and silicon micromechanics is the current flavour of the decade.

[Craig Sawyers]

Oh dear, it is all coming back. The horror, the horror.

So I went to visit Olivetti in Milan, again mid 80's or thereabout. Another megalithic company based, at that stage, on traditional technologies. The approach to their glorious head offices was down an avenue of identical tree stumps - all very Italian. I'd gone out to sell them my concept for an electronic book. The idea was to have a high resolution CCD to display the text, and a mini CD that would hold a significant library of books.

They did not even offer me a coffee. "Do you have a prototype?" Well no - but we'd like to develop it for you, for your unique use "Is it patented? " Well, no - part of the deal is that during development we will protect the device with a portfolio of patents, which we transfer to you. Yak yak.

Less than half an hour and I was waiting for my taxi back to the airport. And they missed the opportunity to get to market decades before the Kindle.

But unlike Kodak, Olivetti have moved with the times and have a suite of products, services and markets that is solidly founded on core technologies. Good for them.

[Wendymott]

When I worked as a technician in the physics dept at Bradford Uni in the 70's, a new academic joined us from RRE Malvern. He was head of the new "Solid state physics" dept that was set up on floor E.. He was full of stories of the "New" Liquid Crystal Displays they had been developing at RRE. We had to help in making a display for enticing new students to UOB for the next intake. We borrowed from GEC Wembley various displays, including a LCD watch that had been to the moon " sceptical"..Zink sulphide displays..Led displays. After the exhibition I had to return them to GEC personally.
We were also developing the Ground Resistivity meters that are so common place on "Time team".....Up to then they were analog, but I made a digital version using a Twisted Nematic LCD display. It worked a treat until it got hot in the warm summer sunshine when it would turn black....... and recover when cooled. I did a surveying trip to Italy, but had to use an analog instrument for the obvious reason.
It seems fantastic.. the development of this common place piece item that we all take for granted now....... I was lucky to be around at the start.

[Ancient Geek]

I know I'm a bit late to the thread, but anyway...

I actually played a small part in the early days of LCDs in the mid-seventies. I was working as an analytical chemist for a chemical company in Poole, Dorset, who held the manufacturing licence for the range of nematic liquid crystals discovered by Prof. Gray and his team at Hull and further developed at Malvern. The work I did was to do quality control on the materials and precursors, and assist the research chemists in optimising the reaction conditions used in production. I was mostly using gas chromatography for analysis, but we also used rather primitive observational techniques for measuring the phase transitions: crystalline to nematic (K to N) and nematic to isotropic (N to I).

The materials themselves were (maybe still are) cyanoalkyl biphenyls, cyanoalkoxy biphenyls and cyanopentyl terphenyl. Each of these had a fairly small range of temperatures over which they were nematic liquid crystals, but a carefully calculated mixture of several of them would make a eutectic mixture to maximise the nematic range.

One interesting thing was the inclusion of a small quantity of CB15, which was cyanopentylbiphenyl, but with an assymetric carbon in the pentyl chain. This made it optically active (i.e. it rotates the plane of polarisation of light), but the key property was that it eliminated areas of reverse twist in a display. These were often seen in early cheap Russian LCD watches, and you could spot them as patches of the display that were slow to move from on to off.

The starting point for all of the materials was 4-bromo-biphenyl, which was reacted with an aliphatic acid chloride in a Friedel-Krafts acylation. These acic chlorides didn't smell very nice. Valeryl chloride, for example, was readily decomposed in moist air to make valeric acid, which is the stink of sweaty male goats. This stuff, being quite volatile, would permeate your clothes, but after a while you stopped noticing it. It made the lunchtime queue to buy a sandwich disappear quite quickly, though. If you spilled valeryl chloride, you mopped it up with ethanol. Ethanol reacted with the valeryl chloride to make valeryl acetate. You're probably all familiar with this, as it's the synthetic strawberry scent.

Before leaving that department, I also spent some time working on special dyes to mix with liquid crystals to make coloured displays. This involved making liquid crystal cells between two microscope slides and measuring the absorbance spectrum with different orientations of polarised light. I don't think they made much progress with that idea, though.

[McMurdo]

A google-about led me to a german digital watch collectors website which states the first commercial lcd displays were publically launched by RCA in 1968, soon followed by digital watches and calculators; one of the first watches being the american Westclox Quartzmatic that were produced for some years. The first LCD calculator was apparently the Sharp EL805 in 1973.

These early LCD's all seem to have sun shades or hinged lids that are raised to view. I wonder if this just improves the contrast or whether it was to protect them from the sun etc?

I'm sure when I was at school I was taught that lcd displays were invented for the apollo space programme, but suspect they meant the 7-segment display, which, on apollo, was not LCD but EL-based.

I saw my first LCD display when I had a primary school leaving present of a Casio calculator in 1979. Everyone else had VFD or LED calculators!

[VT FUSE]

Ancient Geek-Thank you for confirming by your posting that it was not so much an RCA (Princeton) USA invention but work carried out here (along with HUD and more recent displays for the military and civilian world)

I expect you had plenty of contact with Cyril Hilsum and the displays group at R.S.R.E./DERA in Malvern in your capacity.

[Ancient Geek]

Certainly the first successful LCD materials were the cyano-alkyl-biphenyls created by Gray et.al. in Hull in '73. Previous materials were either unstable or required high temperatures, rendering them much less practical.

[Ancient Geek]

Originally Posted by VT FUSE

I expect you had plenty of contact with Cyril Hilsum and the displays group at R.S.R.E./DERA in Malvern in your capacity.

Sadly, I'm afraid I had no contact at all, as I was a mere analytical oik. BDH (the cmpany I worked for) did very little work on the electrical properties, certainly in the early days. I think that they hired a physicist in about 1976 to carry on that sort of work. Similarly, I don't think that Malvern were particularly concerned with material synthesis. BDH were a bunch of cheapskates, really, doing everything on a shoestring. For example, the gas chromatograph I used was an ancient Pye 104, with an even more ancient Kent Chromalog electromechanical integrator. It was so primitive and unreliable that it was quicker and more accurate to measure peaks on chart paper with a ruler.

[Craig Sawyers]

Hilsum was/is (he's 92!) an interesting character. Whole raft of awards to his name now. I was interviewed by him in '77, and my degree supervisor, in the tone of voice used for "Don't mention the war" said "Don't mention the Gunn diode!".

Hilsum did all the theory for the Gunn diode in 1961, but lacked the semiconductor fab plant to make one. Gunn actually had the might of IBM behind him and made one in 1962.

I've met Hilsum a few times since, and seen him give presentations. And he refuses to call the device a Gunn diode - negative resistance microwave diode or tranfer electron device yes - but Gunn, no way.

[ColinTheAmpMan1]

Originally Posted by Karen O

a horrible liquid (Nitrobenzene).

Karen, I'm afraid that you might be falling for a "popular" misconception that most, if not all chemicals are horrible and dangerous. In fact, nitrobenzene is fairly ok when handled with respect, as are all chemicals. Having said that, some stink horribly or are truly dangerous, but one takes appropriate measures when using them, or avoids them.

Now, tens of kilovolts are a different kettle of fish...

Colin (PhD in Organic Chemistry and have messed about with a few nasties in my time).

[julie_m]

Nitrobenzene really isn't something you would want to ingest or inhale into your body, though. Nor would it be a good idea to live in a flat above someone who was making the stuff, just in case they left the heat on a bit too long .....

[Ancient Geek]

Originally Posted by julie_m

Nitrobenzene really isn't something you would want to ingest or inhale into your body, though.

If you use traditional shoe polish (the paste in round tins) then you've probably ingested at least a little nitrobenzene by absorption via skin contact. Yes, it still contains nitrobenzene.

[Karen O]

Nah! All chemicals are horrible, the worst offender being water. It is everything - your worst nightmare:

It's Hydrogen Oxide.
It's Oxygen Dihydride.
It's an alcohol - carbon atom count: ethanol(2) methanol(1) nonanol(0)=water!
It has H+ ions so it might be an acid.
It has OH- ions so it might be an alkali.

And to think, we drink this stuff!
Urrrrrgh.

[kalee20]

LCD's are very much the display of the present, and quite a bit of the future too, I have no doubt. LED's have largely fallen by the wayside other than general-purpose 7-segment displays. But vacuum-fluorescent displays seem to be hanging on, a minority but still a significant one!