Liquid crystals are the granddaddy of what we think of as "displays"—before their advent in wristwatches and calculators we had cathode ray tubes and other "monitor"-like tech. Now clever engineering has become ubiquitous, overcoming many of display tech's earlier problems (easily damaged, very poor viewing angles), particularly with the "in-plane switching" tech used in the LCD displays on Apple's iPad.Its history stretches back to the 1888 discovery of the "liquid crystalline" nature of cholesterol molecules by Friedrich Reinitzer, through pioneering work by Dr. George Gray at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern (whose successor organization QinetiQ held the patent for many years) in the 1960s, to the first viable displays in the early 1970s.
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Author: Kit Eaton
