When were LCD's invented?

[hannahs radios]

I was given a temperature controlled soldering station a while back it works great and I'm pleased with it however the other day I had to change the mains plug and was surprised to see the lead was red/black/green colour coded now I know these colours were abandoned in the early 70s but did LCDs exist then? I thought they came a bit later anyone know please

[paulsherwin]

Mass market LCD displays arrived in 1976 or 77 so this is indeed odd.

[dseymo1]

There was an article in one of the 'Practical' mags about making conducice glass using evaporated tin, which touched on ts use with 'nematic crystals'. This must have been about the time that the technology was evolving.

[ms660]

Carrots...!

Lawrence.

[G6Tanuki]

I rememner being shown an - at the time very hush-hush - LCD panel about 2 inches square when I was on a 6th-form visit to the UK arm of one of the larger US-owned defence-equipment manufacturers in summer 1973.

They said they were having trouble getting it to operate reliably over the sort of temperature range needed for military use, but that the technology 'showed some promise'.

[VT FUSE]

A google search along the lines of: LCD displays R.S.R.E.-Malvern will bring masses of info on the invention of these displays along with the individuals of merit along with their teams.Work was advancing from around 1965.

There were a couple of dead ends such as Ferromagnetic displays also.

I believe that formal patents and licence agreements were early seventies and later touch screen displays came into use late 80's/90's.

Regarding the soldering station,it rather sounds like a mongrel refurb from at least a couple of units?

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

Mass market LCD displays arrived in 1976 or 77...

I'd say a little earlier. Somewhere around here still is the calculator my father bought for desktop use at work, a Sharp EL-8001.

http://www.modip.ac.uk/artefact/aibdc-02301

It wasn't a high-end model, cost I think was around £15, and the date of circa 1973 given there and elsewhere agrees with my memory of having been more or less a fourth-former at the time.

Paul

[ParcGwyn]

According to this website: https://www.pcmag.com/feature/296609...-brief-history the first LCD watch appeared in 1972.

There is also this patent filed in 1971: https://www.google.com/patents/US3731986

Dave

GW7ONS

[paulsherwin]

Most calculators and watches were still LED in 1975. I know that because I had to buy a calc for my first year university stats course (I still have it). The cheaper calcs were still using LEDs when I graduated in 1978 but LCDs were clearly on the rise. My parents bought me a Seiko LCD watch as a graduation present - it was very expensive, costing nearly £200 (and those were 1978 £s). A couple of years later, filling stations were giving them away with tankfulls of petrol (though not the Seiko ones).

The EL8001 in #7 looks like an LED display to me, though it's hard to tell with it turned off, and the description does say LCD.

[Argus25]

Patents for LCD's in 1972 ?

I have attached 3 documents which explain the invention of LCD screens, as they relate to TV at least, though Alphanumeric displays are mentioned in the text, including watches, speedos and dashboard instruments, published in 1969.

RCA did the research work for LCD TV's and this started in the early 60's but the technology/idea goes back to 1888. But as noted Richard Williams at RCA did most of the work in the early 60's.(its all in the text of the attached 3 pages from Electronics Australia, June 1969 that I have scanned for you, sorry the pages might come up out of order).

They had quite a respectable LCD TV image then, but they were not entirely happy with it.

[ionburn]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

My parents bought me a Seiko LCD watch as a graduation present - it was very expensive, costing nearly £200 (and those were 1978 £s). A couple of years later, filling stations were giving them away with tankfulls of petrol (though not the Seiko ones).

I had one of the cheapo LCD watches in the late 1970's. The TV rental company I worked for were giving them away with new business to customers.

Someone locally bought it off me recently (in a much used state). He said that they were becoming collectable, but it was too far worn (plating etc) for me to be concerned about.

[percival007]

Originally Posted by ms660

Carrots...!

Lawrence.

?

Erm........Broccoli.

James.

[G6Tanuki]

Re. post #10: are they suggesting LCDs be used as some sort of TV-projection-device in those photos?

[Sidenote: around 1990 for a client I bought a "LCD transmission panel" display - a rectangular thing you sat on top of one of the then-ubiquitous-in-lecture-theatres transparency-film overhead-projectors and connected it to your PC [CGA or EGA if you'd got a "Hercules graphics" card fitted!] so you could show 'electronic slides'. It was frightfully expensive [around £5K] and had a big problem in that though it had its own cooling-fan if you had too much 'dark' in what you were trying to present it overheated and the - monochrome - image faded-out after about five minutes. Still, it was good for giving training-courses in IBM Displaywrite-4, Foxbase, Lotus 123 and Visicalc! ]

[kalee20]

Practical Electronics had a constructional digital clock project, mid 1974, using an LCD.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

The EL8001 in #7 looks like an LED display to me, though it's hard to tell with it turned off, and the description does say LCD.

There's a photo of the EL-8001 working at

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/ht...p_el-805s.html

along with some contemporary Sharp LCD offerings. The display, as detailed there, is rather different in construction and appearance from the more familiar later panels, but definitely LCD.

Paul

[paulsherwin]

Fair enough, I stand corrected.

[Andrew2]

I recall going to a trade show (Harrogate?) in the late 70's and I think it was Toshiba who were showing a small-screen LCD TV. It was monochrome only and it looked really nice on the testcard and captions etc. But Lord, when anything moved it smeared like Billy-O!

[Craig Sawyers]

Between 1974 and 1977 I was at Southampton University doing an Electronics degree. In the second year there was a course on "Advanced Devices", among which was liquid crystal displays.

Craig

[David G4EBT]

Originally Posted by ms660

Carrots...!

Lawrence.

Yes indeed, 'liquid crystals' were discovered (rather than 'invented') a lot further back than we might imagine, albeit not put to any practical use at the time. In 1888, liquid crystals were first discovered in cholesterol extracted from carrots by Austrian botanist and chemist, Friedrich Reinitzer. Then you have to fast forward to 1962 before much else happened.

Inventor, James Fergason holds some of the fundamental patents in liquid crystal displays filed in the early 1970's, including key US patent number 3,731,986 for "Display Devices Utilizing Liquid Crystal Light Modulation". In 1972, the International Liquid Crystal Company (ILIXCO) owned by James Fergason produced the first modern LCD watch based on James Fergason's patent.

Source:

https://www.thoughtco.com/liquid-cry...ry-lcd-1992078

[McMurdo]

let's have a pic of the soldering iron!