In Las Vegas abutting week, a twenty-five year adventure could appear to a acknowledged conclusion, back a British aggregation launches what it believes will be a boastful aggregate of science and technology. Artificial Logic's e-reader, the Que, will be apparent on the aperture morning of the Consumer Electronics Show. It could be one of the show's stand-out articles - or it could end up active beneath an barrage of advertising about a accessible battling accessory from a better-known firm.
This adventure began in the 1980s at Cambridge University's world-renowned Cavendish laboratory, area the physicist Richard Friend was animate on carbon-based abstracts for semi-conductors. He approved and bootless to get electronics companies absorbed in the artificial light-emitting diodes which emerged from his analysis - but back he teamed up with addition Cambridge academician Henning Sirringhaus, they concluded up award means to book transistors assimilate plastic. It was this assignment which led to the development of the light, adjustable displays which Artificial Logic believes will revolutionise the way we read.
On a albino day aloof afore Christmas, I went to accommodated the two men at Artificial Logic's offices on the Cambridge Science Park. They are both still teaching at the university, while befitting an eye on the advance of the close they founded in 2000. And while it has taken a decade for Artificial Logic to accompany its aboriginal artefact to market, Sir Richard - he was knighted in 2003 - was assured that the continued delay would be worthwhile:
"The best absorbing affair is it's an affiliation of axiological science and world-leading engineering - it's the affair that the British are not declared to be able to do."
At that stage, they were not able to appearance me the final product, but I was accustomed to handle ancestor displays developed in Cambridge and again bogus at their bulb in Dresden.
They are ablaze and flexible, and Professor Sirringhaus told me the aim was to accommodate the aforementioned acquaintance you get from paper, rather than the one you get from the bottle which is bare for accepted screens:
"The accomplished account acquaintance is about captivation article that is unbreakable.
"It's light; you can amusement it like paper; you can being it in your briefcase. If you demand to apprehend a business certificate or paper, again the weight of the bottle acclimated in accepted technology is absolutely significant."
Plastic Logic has active deals with a cardinal of above bi-weekly groups, including the Financial Times and USA Today, to accomplish their titles accessible anniversary day on the Que e-reader. The product, which will access a fast-growing bazaar bedeviled by articles like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, will be aimed principally at the business market. While the technology would admittance a roll-up screen, it seems they've gone for article added conventional, so the Que may not attending that altered from e-readers with a bottle screen.
What's absolutely amazing about this business is that that it has gone all the way from analysis in a laboratory, to accomplishment a product, to architecture a all-around sales and business aggregation - abundant of that operation is now based in California - after sacrificing its independence. Which ability aloof be a mistake. A beneath adventuresome advantage would accept been to authorization its technology to Amazon or Sony - or maybe Apple - and let them use their undoubted business ability to advertise the abstraction of artificial displays to the world.
There are now acceptable letters that Apple has an accident appointed for backward January area it will bare a abstruseness new product. The blogs and fan sites are animate with feverish belief about the iSlate - allegedly the name of a book computer which will accommodate aggregate from books, TV programmes and music to the band-aid to all-around warming.
I'm as absorbed as anyone to see what Apple absolutely has been ambuscade up Steve Jobs' sleeve, but I achievement that amidst all the hullabaloo, the barrage of Artificial Logic's Que abutting Thursday will not be overlooked. I will be in the United States to awning this and a cardinal of added technology belief abutting week, back this blog will accept a new attending and a new name. So acknowledgment for alert in 2009 - and see you abutting year.