(APPLIED-TECHNOLOGY) Applied Technology Supports E Ink to Enhance its Lead in
Electronic Displays
LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 5, 1997--Venture capital firm
Applied Technology has provided start-up financing for E Ink Corporation,
located in Cambridge, MA. E Ink is a development stage company created to
commercialize discoveries made by Professor Joe Jacobson and a team of
researchers at the MIT Media Lab. Combining expertise in a diverse array of
scientific and engineering disciplines, this group has invented a new way to
make electronic displays. According to Tom Grant, managing general partner of
Applied Technology's Massachusetts office, "E Ink's enabling technology has
the
potential to revolutionize where we can install electronic displays and how we
can send and receive information. We look forward to working with management
and our co-investors Atlas Ventures and Solstice Capital to build the
company."
E Ink's approach is based on the concept of "electronic ink" and is
protected by multiple patent pendings. Using electronic ink, a flat panel
display can be printed on top of nearly any material using existing printing
presses. The resulting display offers the prospect of being cheaper than an
LCD, drawing 50 times less power, offers better contrast with higher
resolution, and can be printed onto a flexible piece of paper or plastic.
The team made its breakthrough when it successfully microencapsulated a
micromechancial display system creating a display material with excellent
reflectivity and viewing angle and contrast ratio. The patent-pending
microencapsulation process also enables the company to suspend its display
material in an ink form that offers design and manufacturing wins. Products
using electronic ink displays can achieve new looks by utilizing curves,
flexibility, color-matching, ultra-thinness and bigger sizes at a cost-
effective price when compared to traditional handheld LCD displays. Ink
displays can range in size from very small to billboards.
Joe Jacobson is founder and assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab where
he initiated a program to develop electronic paper-books with pages consisting
of electronically addressable, multiple writable displays formed on real
paper.
He holds several patents and patents pending in display technology and paper-
like displays. He received his PhD in physics at MIT in 1992 in femtosecond
laser engineering. He created the world's shortest pulse laser (in optical
cycles) in 1991.
Applied Technology operates with a team of three managing partners --
Frederick Bamber, David Boucher, and Thomas Grant-- and two special general
partners, Eugene Flath, and MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte. The company
maintains offices in Austin, TX, Lexington, MA, and Menlo Park, CA.
CONTACT: Applied Technology
Fred Bamber
Imelda Kenny
(781) 862-8622
Imelda_Kenny@apptec.com
------------------------
Yakov Horenstein
Milano, Italy
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