Inkless news delivery: A closeup of an E Ink Immedia public display sign at a supermarket in Phoenix, Ariz.

News to burn: A wider shot of the E Ink Immedia device in a Phoenix supermarket.

E-ink project at Arizona Republic proves the concept

Etch A Sketch: Remember the red laptop-monitor size gizmo? The inventor of the "child's" toy, Arthur Granjean, died in 1999, yet something about his invention seems to be creeping to the forefront of technology.

With the Etch A Sketch, you could draw and write, albeit crudely, and you had to be creative with the knobs to get just the right design - kind of like Adobe Illustrator. But when you were finished or you didn't like the result, you shook the thing like crazy and had a blank palette.

Sounds a little like one of the new technologies on the block, electronic ink -- reusable ink.

Electronic ink contains electrically charged particles that can be reshaped depending on the charge sent to them. You don't shake your monitor, you send it an electronic pulse. Same theory, just different technologies. The Etch A Sketch uses a "grayish mixture of aluminum and plastic beads" that a metal stylus emits as you turn the knobs.

The Etch A Sketch has been used in many ways, including advertising. Its technology may not have changed, but the idea of reusing an image surface certainly has.

One of the keys to revolutionizing the disbursement of information lays in finding a means to reduce the use of paper and economically increase the speed of delivering the information. Delivering information to personal computers is standard procedure today. But quickly and cleanly delivering or displaying information in public continues to be based on the use of billboards, posters and other static displays. A new display technology is shouldering its way into the game.

The idea of electronic ink has been discussed for many years. The idea of no longer having to purchase ink by the barrel has quite an appeal, especially for newspapers. But don't fret; newspapers won't be dumping the good-old tangible product for many moons.

But ink is one of the largest consumables, behind newsprint, for a newspaper. In order to adapt and maintain costs, newspapers must embrace such technologies. For a newspaper to deliver information, including ads and promos, to a wider, more general audience at an economical cost, electronic ink may solve that dilemma.

E Ink Corp., a Cambridge, Mass.-based technology company, offers electronic ink technology that helps put information in front of customers quickly and cleanly. The start-up company, founded in 1997, deploys its electronic ink onto a display product called Immedia, which is touted as "the world's first commercial electronic ink product," and is a wireless unit that allows messages to be displayed, updated and corrected with, literally, the touch of a key.

Microcapsules live in Phoenix
The Arizona Republic recently finished a three-month test using E Ink's technology utilizing Immedia Display Modules. The Republic became the first newspaper, and one of the first clients, to use electronic ink to reach consumers. For the test, displays were placed in 11 Safeway grocery stores around the Phoenix area. The information was then sent from the newspaper to all the devices at the same time, allowing for instant and consistent updates.

E Ink's electronic ink was invented by Joe Jacobson and two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass.

Electronic ink is really a liquid. Floating inside the liquid are millions of microcapsules, which have a clear outer shell and are filled with blue dye and microscopic white pigment chips. The tiny white chips float around in the blue dye until electrically charged. The chips all carry a positive charge.

The microcapsules live between two conductive, electrode layers that allow the white chips to move to the top or to the bottom, depending on the electric charge sent. A negative charge to the top electrode layer will send the white chips to the top, making the microcapsule visible, or white. A negative charge sent to the bottom electrode layer will make the microcapsule appear invisible, or blue.

To generate text, each of the million microcapsules is charged to make letters (white) or just the background (blue). The Immedia electronic display consists of a sheet of plastic film that is laminated onto a layer of circuitry on which the electronic ink is printed. This forms patterns that can be controlled with electric charges.

Paul Drzaic, director of technology at E Ink, said electronic ink offers a number of positive alternatives to standard display technology. He also said that the newspaper industry is ripe for this type of technology.

"We are relying heavily on the guidance of [our] newspaper investors," Drzaic said.

In fact, newspapers are one of the bigger investors. The Hearst Corp., Gannett Co. Inc. (owners of the Republic) and the McClatchy Co. are among a list of investors, which also includes Motorola Inc., Lucent Technologies and Applied Technology.

Drzaic said he became interested in E Ink's technology when he saw it at a display conference. With a background in materials, chemistry and display, Drzaic was the eighth employee to be hired by E Ink and has been with the company for three years.

He leans toward the practicality of electronic ink. He also points out its efficient use of power. A display unit can be turned off and it will still display the image, unlike any other devices like liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

"There are three different ways to achieve low power with this technology," Drzaic said. "One is the reflective technology. It reflects light like paper. Even e-books have background lighting. The second is that it has a memory feature. Once you write an image, it stays for minutes to hours to days, depending on the setup. The third is that it is inherently low power by design."

Low power
With the benefit of low power, it becomes cost effective to position display modules in the field. Once the modules are in the field, it's up to the client to send the data to them.

"The modules can be updated daily, weekly or however often the client wants," said Cyndi Reitmeyer, retail marketing manager at E Ink. "It only takes a few minutes."

Communicating with the boxes can be done in several ways.

"The Republic is using wireless paging that downloads from a satellite to the displays," Reitmeyer said.

As part of the purchase of the Immedia Display Module, clients receive communication options that include the CommBox/Pager, which provides a two-way pager for updating. E Ink is working on the ability to update via a handheld device. But basically, Reitmeyer pointed out, the client gets 20 signs in one, given the flexibility of the Immedia displays.

"The cost for an Immedia Display Module is around $1,500," Reitmeyer said. "With the purchase, the client receives the display unit and basic installation."

The life of the sign is about one year. But again, it's the power savings.

"The display module uses about 0.1 watts of electricity," Reitmeyer said. "It's a lower cost per impression."

E Ink specifications on the module say it can handle between 18 and 54 lines of text (depending on the sign). The letters are in a 2§-inch font called Mosaic. Line length is 16 characters and the color is white on blue. It weighs roughly 10 pounds.

While the Republic was the first newspaper to begin using electronic displays, the majority of clients are department stores. Reitmeyer said customers include Macy's, Eckerd and J.C. Penney Co. Inc.

"Aside from research and development, we are really trying to get the signs out in public," Drzaic said. "Right now, the displays are limited to text and numbers, as well as white letters and blue background."

Although it's just white text and blue background, the displays can be viewed from all angles and are not affected by sunlight or dim light, and the contrast ratio is more than 10-to-1. But Drzaic said they are working on full-color.

"We wanted to push toward high-resolution and recognized color was important," he said. "We have several significant prototypes and should have more within a year."

Competition
In addition to the work being done by E Ink, Xerox is working on electronic paper at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Parc). The Gyricon sheet is a thin layer of transparent plastic that contains millions of small beads with two contrasting colors.

"Parc technology is interesting," Drzaic said. "We are happy to compete on a feature-to-feature basis. We view competition as a sign we are doing the right thing."

To date, E Ink is much more visible than Parc.

Gena Zestrijan, retail merchandising manager for the Arizona Republic, said that the paper saw potential opportunity with the E Ink displays.

"We went to retailers about the interest and agreed to do a trial run with Safeway," Zestrijan said. "We are now in the middle of our second test. This test is with Circle K [a convenience store]. For this test we are using the battery power option."

However, she said the results weren't so promising.

"We did not see any marked increase in our own sales," Zestrijan said. "But we saw it as a positioning opportunity."

Right now the displays are on the newspaper racks at the Circle Ks. In the Safeway test, they hung in the windows and in the store.

"They display news briefs, headlines and point-of-purchase prices," she said.

Dave Siebert, photo editor for the 455,000-circulation Republic, was in the technology department for the initial implementation and worked on it from a newsroom workflow perspective.

"The biggest question that came up was: What is the purpose? Is it to purchase today's paper, or a way to deliver breaking news?" he said. "The Republic wanted to increase point of sale."

Siebert said the technology requires minimal time from newsroom staffers. And initial time was teaching how to write headlines to fit with ads.

"It's about 30 minutes a day for a copy editor to write headlines to fit," he said.

Initial response from the newsroom was fairly typical -- "Oh, something else to do," but he said editors also saw the potential.

For the newsroom to update the display, Siebert said, editors fill out a browser-based form and push a button.

Everyone seems to focus on the potential of the E Ink technology -- with good reason. Now that the technology is proven, and is available at a low cost, developers will be bent on furthering the product.

Drzaic sees the inclusion of handheld devices, increased high-resolution graphic capabilities, e-book readers and e-newspapers.

"You have a subscription to your newspaper," Drzaic said, "but with one reader you could have multiple subscriptions."

Also down the road is development and use of plastic transistors.

"The motivation for working with the plastic transistors was cost," Drzaic said. "It's still experimental. Also, in the near term we're not banking on the plastic transistor, but it is very important in the future. Right now we're still focused on silicon."

The applications appear endless: Anywhere information is displayed today is a potential site for an electronic display that could be controlled completely via remote devices.

And once the technology advances to the state where it can be used on a computer-like monitor device, laptops will become a whole new animal. By using the reflective technology, laptops will no longer need LCD monitors. Enjoying the reflective technology means no more angling the screen in different lighting settings. And the weight that accompanies such design will thrill any reporter on assignment. Drzaic said the technology is still in its infancy. If that's so, the next few years will be interesting ones indeed.

-- Jason Zappe, jzappe@colepapers.net

E Ink Corp.,
(617) 499-6000,
e-mail: info@eink.com;
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
(650) 812-4000.

From THE COLE PAPERS, January 2001, Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved.