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The Global LCD Business
After the discovery of liquid crystals and the development of its science in Europe, the liquid crystal display prototype was invented in America, and with the synthesis of a stable liquid crystal compound in Britain and the advent of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon integrated circuit active matrix addressing system, America and Japan developed the super twisted nematic liquid crystal display for digital watches and calculators in the early 1970s.
A black-and-white twisted nematic television was demonstrated in New York in 1978 by Westinghouse’s Luo Fang-Chen who had developed the first feasible liquid crystal active matrix driving system , but a month before the demo, in an all-too- familiar scenario, the Westinghouse liquid crystal group had been disbanded and all research terminated. Western corporations withdrawing and Eastern companies eagerly filling the void was effecting a paradigm for the liquid crystal display industry, exemplified by Luo himself eventually returning to Taiwan to become the chief technology officer at AU Optronics, and the once famous “Westinghouse” brand television devolving into an operation run by, and supplied with panels from, Taiwan’s Chimei Optoelectronics.
RCA’s Legacy
Perhaps the most compelling example of the paradigm at work is RCA. At RCA, the brilliant and far-sighted researchers, although the originators of and the driving force behind the new liquid crystal display, and in spite of technical breakthrough after ...
