Applied Technology Supports E Ink to Enhance its Lead in Electronic Displays

Business Wire, Dec 5, 1997

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