The E Ink Display

E Ink has transformed the e-book reader market!

Although e-books, and e-book readers, have been around for years, the e-book field has been slow in adoption, especially in the west. One of the main reasons has been the dissatisfaction with most e-book reading devices.

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) used to be the standard display technology for readers. Though they are regularly used for computer and laptop displays, LCDs are nonetheless considered by many to be hard to read for extended periods of time, and especially during text reading. As a result, western consumers mostly shunned the LCD-based reader displays, and many avoided e-books until a better display could be devised.

Enter the E Ink corporation. E Ink was the first corporation to successfully bring to market a new electronic display that approximated the visual experience of reading paper. The technology, called electronic ink (or e-ink), is essentially a sandwich of thin films, containing tiny balls of charged particles that react to a small amount of current to assume a black, white or grey appearance on command. The visual effect is that of a high-resolution printed paper display, which the eye can view with significantly less eyestrain than with other display types. It also has the advantage of needing very little power to run, and in fact no power at all to maintain a page image, allowing for a much longer running time on battery power.

E Ink's display technology was quickly applied to the newest e-book reading devices. Consumers and critics immediately raved about the enhanced quality of the reading experience over other displays, and soon the word spread: "E-book readers are like paper!" Even with the most die-hard detractors, it generally took only one look at an E Ink display to convince them. Soon, readers using e-ink were selling in unprecedented numbers, and driving a resurgence in the popularity of e-book reading.

Although other display technologies may come and go, the E Ink corporation deserves credit for bringing a huge segment of the population into the e-book market through its display innovations. For more information about E Ink, visit their website.