Electronic Age Paper

Russ Wilcox tells the colorful tale behind E Ink Corp. with the ease of someone who has done it a thousand times.

It goes like this: Joseph Jacobson was sitting on a beach in California a few years ago, finishing up a book. Wouldn’t it be nice, the MIT physicist mused, to have another one handy? Or better yet, what if the book in his hands could magically fill itself up with the words of a new one? Atop that seemingly random thought Jacobson and two of his students created a company.

Whether fact or fancy--Jacobson, no longer involved in E Ink’s day-to-day operations, didn’t respond to numerous interview requests--the story gets to the heart of the company’s dream: to create a flexible, portable substance that looks and feels like paper but functions as an easily readable computer screen.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based start-up recently unveiled the first prototype of what can fairly be called electronic paper.

Like paper, it is light and bendable. Rather than producing its own light, it reflects outside light, which makes it easier to read. And like a computer screen, it can be constantly refreshed with new information.

The final product is still years away, but electronic paper and ink could someday revolutionize computer screens, along with books, magazines and newspapers.

“Any content, any time, in any form is an incredibly provocative concept that would be incredibly beneficial to society,” said Wilcox, E Ink’s vice president.

The challenging technology being developed by E Ink, and a few of its competitors, works on a simple premise recognizable to any high school physics student.

Tiny globules of black ink are inserted between small plastic sheets. Inside each globule are even tinier chips of electrically charged white paint. The globules are “spun” by another electrical charge, which determines whether the black ink or the white chips are face-up.

The result is a well-contrasted image, free of the glare and other problems that beset most computer screens. And once the image is set, it can be “frozen” and continue to display the same image or characters without requiring new power.

“In the new mobile society, things that require low power are going to be the things that really change the way we do things,” said Howard Traub, who heads a Hewlett-Packard Co. printing and imaging center in Palo Alto. HP is among the other companies working to develop similar technology.

Companies have been pursuing electronic paper for 20 years, though only recently has the competition really heated up. The technology was first developed by Xerox Corp. at its famed Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s.

Xerox recently became interested in electronic paper again but spun off its research program into a private company called Gyricon Media Inc. in December.

Until they can produce bendable electronic paper, E Ink and Gyricon are working on flat-screen products--notably computer-controlled retail signs for stores. E Ink’s signs are already being used by J.C. Penney Co. at its department stores and its Eckerd drugstores.

Gyricon, which has partnered with Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., said it expects $100 million a year in revenue from its sign business.

As a separate company, Gyricon will have an easier time than debt-riddled Xerox in attractingcapital, and it will be able “to focus on a substantial market that is not normally in the mainline interest of Xerox,” said interim Chief Executive Robert Sprague.

Kent Displays Inc. and Siemens Corp. are also working on technology that could contribute to the electronic newspaper. But flexible electronic paper--the true E-book--is still at least five years off, Wilcox of E Ink estimates.

E Ink’s prototype offers only a few hundred pixels, not enough for high resolution on small devices, and it depends on plastic circuits still being developed by collaborator Lucent Technologies Inc. But there’s no longer any doubt it can be done.

The media industry has taken notice, both in the U.S. and abroad. E Ink lists Gannett Co., Hearst Corp. and McClatchy Co., as well as leading publishing companies in Italy and France, among its investors.

“We believe that people will want to have a product that has the portability and characteristics of newspapers and magazines,” said Kenneth Bronfin, senior vice president at Hearst Interactive Media. “But if you can really make a product that’s electronic and has the same look and feel, we think that’s a viable substitute.”

Bronfin said his company sees E Ink as the one most likely to hit the electronic paper jackpot, but not everyone else is as sure.

“When we analysts look at this, we get very excited because we’re seeing the future of displays,” said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies. “But it’s way too early to tell who the big winners are going to be.”

At E Ink’s small lab-office, its 130 employees use scooters to get from the work area to the recreation area: a foosball table and mini-basketball court. Despite receiving nearly $60 million in venture capital, it doesn’t look like the kind of company ready to undertake mass production.

“Trying to build the manufacturing plant that you’re going to need to build this is a very expensive proposition,” Bajarin said.

He said he expects that people who began their reading lives with books would have trouble switching to electronic books, no matter how readable and portable they become.

“I don’t believe that my generation or even my son’s generation will be the one that takes full advantage of this new technology medium,” he said.