Having witnessed this, at the time, or later when you reflected on it, what did you learn? After they were discovered in 1888 or so, in the 1930s, there was some very good work done in Germany by several people. But I had no problems with Jim, other than the fact that he just didn't meld well with the academic environment he was working in. I'd rather leave that to somebody else to decide. I was dismayed that Glenn and Fergason didn't really work together to take advantage of this for Kent State University. Of course, after they could do that, they began to think about how to make pixels. Very strong lady administratively who would take the bull by the horns. [Laugh] They wanted to fill a position at Kent, and I was looking at other schools, too. The Institute would've been a larger and more effective organization much earlier. He could not have done it if it hadn't been for the president, Robert White. The primary reason I did was Jim McGrath and Tony Silvidi. Request Tour Send an Email Highlights Here are some of the most popular amenities Pet Friendly Patio Floor Plans 1 unit available 1 Bedroom 1 bed 1 bath $625/mo [Laugh]CRAWFORD: Where did this expertise come from? We didn't think we could ever make a raser. CRAWFORD: You mentioned you'd seen their names in the literature. The company soon became a manufacturing company, marketing and selling a consumer product in high volume. They said they wanted to fill a position, and they invited me to Kent to give a talk on my research. I went around looking for investors, since I had no money on my own to do it. And I found another polymer group at Case Western Reserve, headed by Jack Koenig, in the chemical engineering department. you lucky dog. The University was putting money into it that had been arranged earlier, and it looked like it wasn't going anywhere as it set by itself apart from the research campus.CRAWFORD: Did you want to take over as director? CRAWFORD: I'm thinking of somebody like the current CEO, Asad Khan, who did his dissertation at the LCI while he was working full-time at Kent Displays.DOANE: We've had a lot of students here from Kent State in addition to Asad as well as students from other local universities. You can learn more about the company by talking with Asad. But, luckily I had these polymer dispersions that I discovered with my friend Pino and they had shown promise for switchable windows. He had moved on by then and wanted to develop and ultimately sell liquid crystal displays for watches. You need extremely clean environments to do display research as well as switchable windows and other things. This is what inspired me when I got into patenting myself. We had meetings and all sorts of interactions, particularly through the Hughes Research group. Win over prospective landlords with your smart budgeting. [And I wanted to get Alfred Saupe, Adriaan De Vries , who was doing X-rays, Mary Neubert, a synthetic chemist and others at the Institute, into the programs at the research campus and more involved with the department faculty]. Fundamentally, it's very simple. There now have been many other spinoffs. Do you think now, almost 20 years on from the establishment of Kent Displays, what's happening in Northeast Ohio is kind of like what's happening in Cambridge or Silicon Valley?DOANE: Using them as examples really paid off in getting us started in that direction. If you're going to do this, you're going to have to go through one of the agencies like DARPA." Fortunately, I was picked, as well as quite a few others, although not everybody but most. 2 hours from Lincoln, NE. Nuno was wonderful. There was another candidate for one of Glenns positions, Professor Alfred Saupe who was on the faculty at Freiburg University in Germany. In regard to the American Society of Patent Holders, Goodyear was involved. CRAWFORD: Was the goal to further understand the properties of liquid crystals? Then, there's also the question of whether the research was done on campus, licensing, and so forth. By that time, our CEO had left the company, and this person decided to join the company as our new CEO because he'd become interested in the cholesteric liquid crystal technology. They further provided substantial funding to Kent State for PDLC research. I just wanted to get it involved in the graduate programs. But I always had somebody else running the company. I just thought engineering was the place to be for what I seemed to like. Freshly painted, with hardwoods and tile throughout, this 3 bedroom 2 bath will not last long. That was my interest. I thought it should be patented. You have to give it to Jim, he really understood the value of this twist cell technology. Do you want to talk with a That focused the company right there. What are the advantages and challenges of running a technology company in this place, in Northeast Ohio? At that particular time, I was very fortunate because that was a time when universities all around the country were hiring scientists to build their programs because there was lots of money available through the National Science Foundation and various places for research, and universities were taking advantage of that. An agreement can be kind of complicated [and confidential].CRAWFORD: But it sounds like part of it is a sharing of ideas.DOANE: It's a sharing of ideas, yes. It was a source of funding in an exciting area of research for faculty to get into and apply what they knew to that. An ad blocker has likely prevented this video content from . I began to see the need for the company to be able to develop and manufacture displays for other uses instead of just for signs. You learn right away that when you go into a university, particularly in science, if you're going to do research, you're going to have to fund it, and the university isn't going to fund it for you. I think there may be exceptions, but I think those are unusual situations, where a university makes a bundle of money from licensing. They could really build some science programs. CRAWFORD: Was this a type of liquid crystal that was discovered or developed at the Liquid Crystal Institute?DOANE: Actually, that type of liquid crystal was the first ever discovered back in 1888. I'm sure I had considered this because I really had to look at an area of physics in which I could support our family. He got involved with a guy in the biology department to use liquid crystals to detect cancer. [One theme we've discussed is the relationship between academia and industry. But without that, I dont know what wouldve happened to the Institute. What was going on with the Liquid Crystal Institute going into the 70s? I said, "Oh, Jim, I haven't seen you in a long time. But it could've been that attitude of distancing research from industry caused the Institute to be in such a bad spot when I took over. From what I understand, today, it's still a lot like that. There are a lot of components to a display. You mentioned using LCI facilities, but were there other interactions?DOANE: [We still use institute facilities at Kent State today as well as facilities of other universities in the area.] He asked me if I could solder and things like that, and I said, "Yeah, I can do that." It turned out, the annual national meeting that year was in Kansas City. WILLIAM DOANE: Thanks for inviting me. The University had on its books the physics department's first graduate program called Chemical Physics. The display world was just sort of developing industrially apart from the academic world somehow.CRAWFORD: Could it be because the academic world was more focused on basic research?DOANE: I think so. Enter a site search term and use the ENTER KEY to submit your search But our initial work with General Motors really set the stage for becoming a display-oriented group because we then had a clean room and other facilities needed for this. This of course did not happen. CRAWFORD: It really seems to force the question of application.DOANE: Yes, it forces the question of applications. In the process of all of that, was a person monitoring the contract who became very interested in our company. Request Tour Send an Email Highlights Here are some of the most popular amenities Air Conditioning Floor Plans 1 unit available Studio That's what I did for my personal research however it was a small part of the overall program. CRAWFORD: It sounded more like kind of an aspiration. DOANE: The early 70s, of course, is when the THEMIS grant was going. But it was a hot new field, and I thought it was a better way to go. In fact, this company has received funds from the state of Ohio. Then, in RCA, there was a group. I talked to the physics department to see if I could get an appointment for him in physics, but they didnt want to do it. It's actually a nice piece because he put his phone number in there and said, "Anyone who has questions, give me a call." She'd recall these numbers easily as she was a superb manager.CRAWFORD: What did this mean in terms of the research agenda, either for your group or the Institute as a whole? Dave Uhrich was doing the Mssbauer effect. [Laugh] While liquid crystals could get that feature, it had a very short temperature range. CRAWFORD: It sounds like from what you're saying about this idea in 1969, the ground was shifting. [I believe it was University money I brought him on with. CRAWFORD: I know you said there were tensions between Fergason and Brown. I could do what I wanted to do. There were a couple professors I kept running across in the literature. Dr. Doane, thank you for agreeing to speak with me today.J. Everybody seemed happy with that, so we did it. I joined the ROTC and then, of course, after I graduated, I needed to serve a couple years. CRAWFORD: It sounds like you're saying it's partly a cultural thing.DOANE: Yes. Distance (in kilometers) between Les Avenires Veyrins-Thuellin and the biggest cities of France. When he first came here, Fergason had a very nice program. Well, I talked to Shirley, and we didn't know that we could really afford to move down there. CRAWFORD: But students still get their PhD in chemical physics?DOANE: As I understand it, they do [but it may now be broadened to material sciences. The competitive twist cell technology in Asia was getting better and better. CRAWFORD: Could you explain a little bit about what makes PDLCs distinctive as a type of display technology?DOANE: Basically, the way it encapsulates the liquid crystals into droplets. CRAWFORD: What was the reaction to that?DOANE: They picked up on it, but they didn't always do it as well as I would have liked. CRAWFORD: When he did talk about applications, it was mostly in cancer detection work with breast cancer and so forth, and less about the work on displays and stuff. I recall one at IBM with Malcolm Thompson and another group in Troy, Michigan, Optical Imaging Systems, for developing and manufacturing high resolution flat-panel screens. Before that, it was sort of informal. Helfrich eventually went to Hoffman-La Roche located in Basel Switzerland, where he worked with Martin Schadt. I remember that interview very well because I was really kind of scared to meet this dean for research. I can give you a lot of stories about that. We started a project studying these materials with electric field pulses. At that time, the liquid crystals were unstable and would decompose over time. Then, in 1998, you received the Jan Rajchman Prize from the Society for Information Displays, which is described on their website as, "For an outstanding scientific or technical achievement in or contribution to research on flat-panel displays." Then, in the late 70s, maybe 1980, I was working with a researcher who was from the University of Calabria in Southern Italy who had visited the Institute on several occasions. It was all basic research. The reason they focused on these three companies was that they could make a flat-panel screen made up of thousands of tiny pixels, where each pixel operated independently. I think one of the biggest contributions ALCOM made was its students. 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