Paper view

Howard Taub has noticed that his teenage daughter, who weighs "about 100 pounds soaking wet," often struggles with her overloaded school backpack. Unlike a lot of parents, though, he can do something to lighten her load besides complain to the principal. Taub is director of the Printing and Imaging Technologies Center at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (H-P) in Palo Alto, CA. "I have to worry about that time when printing will start to get replaced by other things," he points out. Among those other things is electronic reusable paper, and Taub believes that replacing those heavy books in his daughter's backpack is "a great application for electronic paper, where [information] is stored on a chip or a card."

H-P is among a host of companies conducting research into some type of electronic rewriteable sheets. Xerox PARC scientists have invented Gyricon, a thin sheet of transparent plastic containing millions of randomly dispersed beads similar to toner particles. A company called E Ink has introduced a first-generation, low-resolution electronic paper product. Primary manufacturing concerns are "resolution, contrast, cost, and switching time." Happily, defect density isn't as critically important as it is in chip manufacturing.

"Ultimately, there are a lot of great opportunities for things that aren't paper" when the cost per unit reaches the range of $20 or less, says Taub. His daughter will be in college by then. "To really have something that competes with the look and quality and feel of a piece of paper, we're still probably three to five years off."