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Old 04-17-2012, 01:22 PM
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etype2 etype2 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rca2000 View Post

Also--that LCD display that is being held in the RCA pix from 1966--looks to be a B/W display--was that REAL?? The case looked about the size of a SImpson 260 meter, adapted to fit the display. Bu that "test pattern looked--at least from the distance--MUCH better than pix of the B/W LCD sets from the mid 80's!!

Any thoughts??
I know that the test pattern is real. The photo is part of the Sarnoff library. There is a book out by Costallano, one of the original engineers on Hielmeier's team at RCA. Hielmeier discovered 3 electro-optic effects in liquid crystals in 1962 and he put together a team and they worked in secret. That photo was taken in 1966 outside RCA's Princeton labs. They revealed their secret LCD project in May, 1968 to the world and demoed various LCD panels. I have seen photos of that demo. RCA obtained first patents on LCD and unfortunately did nothing with it. We all know what happened next, the Japanese commercialized LCD. The story goes within RCA circles at the time, that they did not want LCD to compete with their CRT division according to Costellano's book.

The subject of this tread was, could a 1961 hand held TV exist. We now know that RCA was still tinkering with it in 1963 at the time Hielmeirs team was developing LCD displays and we know that others were working on flat TV's like the flat two color CRT in 1966. The Popular Science article mentions the engineers name and I did some research on him. I found that he was awarded several patents for 3 and 4 color flat displays. The answer to what happened to this two color prototype may be available by doing a IEEE technical paper search.

Here is a another RCA mock up from 1965. You get the feeling this was for the LCD displays they were developing behind the scene. http://www.visions4.net/journal/time...k-up-1965-525/
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Last edited by etype2; 04-17-2012 at 01:39 PM. Reason: Add info
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